That’s one conclusion you can draw from a new survey showing that people who own Apple (AAPL) handsets are more willing to pay for stuff than the average Internet surfer.

It’s a U.K. survey, conducted by the Olswang media law firm, but my hunch is that you’d see similar results in the U.S. And given that consumers look much less likely to pay for stuff than publishers and distributors would like, it’s worth chewing on. Guardian:

The survey showed that 58% of people would pay to access online a film just released in cinemas, 52% would pay for access to a film that will not be on DVD for at least two months and 40% would pay to access a film which is already on DVD or pay-TV. Looking at solely iPhone users, however, those figures jump to 73%, 67% and 54% respectively….

News content, however, remains a tough online sell. The survey asked how willing consumers would be to buy a newspaper article or column which could be read on a computer or portable device such as a phone or e-reader. Only 19% of respondents expressed any willingness to pay–though that did increase to 30% among iPhone users.

I’ve repeatedly been skeptical that consumers will pay for something solely because it’s on a mobile device–this is the key idea behind the magazine industry’s digital plans–but I do think there are some cases where this might work.

My own anecdotal confirmation: My household just dropped $6 for three Pixar shorts for an iPhone 3G in a desperate attempt to provide some electronic babysitting/soothing. This, despite the fact that everything we bought is also available for free on YouTube. When you need the stuff, you can’t be dependent on a wireless connection.

Here’s one of the clips we spent $1.99 on:

The world’s biggest video site is trying a “small test” of optional “pre-roll” ads that run at the beginning of its clips. Click on “skip this ad” when the ad starts running and…well, you can guess what happens.

Unlike ad-skipping options offered by other sites, there’s no trade-off with the user here. You simply don’t have to watch the clip.

Given that most online advertising now seems headed in the “big, bigger BIGGEST” direction–come-ons that insist on getting in your face no matter how hard you try to avoid them–this is a pleasant change of pace.

And a smart one, at least theoretically, given that YouTube should be able to charge more for ads users don’t avoid. Just as important, the video site can collect more refined data about the performance of different ads.

I’m okay with preroll ads myself, if they’re short enough and it’s stuff I want to see. And I certainly prefer them to “overlay” ads, which clutter up the bottom of my clip with ugly text that’s a pain to make disappear. But Google (GOOG) and YouTube officials insist I’m in the minority on this one, and that the rest of you guys love them. True?

No ad at all on this one, which I’m only catching up to just now:

That clip, it turns out, is an unlikely homage to…wait for it…the artist formerly known as Puff Daddy. Really!

Go ahead and look at the first two clips at the bottom of the post. Note Hurley’s reference to “salt and pepper” and “two kings getting together.” See? In the Diddy clip, too. Who knew? (Okay, so at least one of you did).

Anyway, Hurley references both clips in a blog post he published this morning commemorating the anniversary of the sale. He also announced that the site is now serving up “well over” one billion video views per day. Last month comScore (SCOR) estimated YouTube was doing 10 billion views per month in the U.S.

And there’s also some general talk about the site’s evolution: Rather than focus solely on short clips, it’s also working to bring in movies and TV shows, etc. Nothing you didn’t know already.

Expect to hear more meaningful–but equally upbeat–talk about the site’s progress next Thursday, when Google (GOOG) announces its Q3 earnings.

Last quarter, Google executives went out of their way to talk up the site, and CFO Patrick Pichette said YouTube could start generating significant profits soon. This week, CEO Eric Schmidt also made a point of praising the YouTube deal and the site’s performance during a New York press conference.

Here, once again, is that famous clip:

And here’s the one Hurley was apparently referencing:

And here, once again, is the most popular clip in YouTube’s history:

Want to see this in action? Go to YouTube and try to find a clip of the Kanye West/Taylor Swift/Beyoncé incident from Sunday night’s Video Music Awards. Everyone’s still talking about it (I don’t know why, really, but I guess I’m out of the demo), but if you want to watch it on YouTube, you’re stuck watching shaky, grainy footage created when people film their TV sets with a camcorder.

That’s the result of Viacom (VIA) and YouTube using the site’s Content ID system–which YouTube installed after Viacom filed suit more than two years ago. Content ID allows YouTube to track copyrighted material on the site as long as the copyright owner tells it what to look for.

It’s not a plug-and-play solution: On Sunday, Viacom had to have staff work through the night to provide YouTube with “reference files” from the live show so that the Google’s video service could find the offending clips and take them down.

But it worked pretty well. Decent-quality clips of the Kanye incident were taken down fairly quickly, and the grainy shots had only generated some 700,000 views by Monday afternoon, according to video-tracker TubeMogul. Meanwhile, MTV’s official version was approaching two million views (it’s now above three million).

You could argue that both Google and MTV would be better served if the official clip was on YouTube. And one day, that might happen. But first, they have to settle their court case.

That looks less likely today than it did a week ago, by the way, because of the recent ruling in the Universal Music/Veoh case. Team Viacom says the case, which appears to be quite similar to its own, won’t have any bearing on the how the company proceeds, while the YouTube guys see it as an affirmation of their position. Translation: More legal back and forth and fewer Viacom clips on the world’s biggest video site.

Here’s one of the low-fi versions, by the way. Not recommended if you’re prone to motion sickness:

A couple of years ago, it was Britney Spears wobbling across the stage; this time around, it’s Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift on behalf of Beyoncé and…pfft.

I can’t work up the enthusiasm to describe it, but happily for Viacom (VIA), MTV’s corporate parent, there are plenty of people who will do that for you: The story is dominating Twitter and Google (GOOG), and it’s the lead story on Yahoo’s (YHOO) front page.

You can also see the incident on Google’s YouTube, of course. But you’ll have to do a little bit of hunting since Viacom clips aren’t supposed to be on the most popular video site in the world–because Viacom is still suing Google and YouTube for $1 billion.

Remember that copyright case? It’s still motoring along, slowly but steadily: Executives from both companies are still being deposed, and if things keep moving forward, there will actually be a trial in 2010–some three years after Viacom filed its first complaint.

In any case, here’s the official version, served up by MTV, which says it has generated more than 1.1 million views of the clip since last night.

But if you’re pressed for time, you might prefer this parody version, which only requires 13 seconds and even manages to incorporate some political commentary.

Check it out:

Note that this clip is likely an unofficial one, at least for U.S.-based Web users, which means that YouTube may take it down in the near future. But no matter: Just type “Usain Bolt” in YouTube’s search box, adjust the “sort by” slider to “newest” and you’ll see clips come flooding in.

Presumably, at some point, Universal Sports, a unit of GE’s (GE) NBC Universal, will get around to posting a sanctioned version of the clip on Google’s (GOOG) video site, but by that point anyone who wants to see the run will have done so. Still, I wouldn’t expect it soon: NBC, recall, is the same outfit that made tennis fans watch one of Wimbledon’s most exciting matches in recent history on tape delay, for no good reason at all.

UPDATE: I spoke too soon. You can indeed watch a sanctioned version of the clip on Universal’s site, though it took some refreshing to get it running. Nice quality once you get there. Still nothing on YouTube, though.

In any event, Universal won’t allow sites like mine to embed the clip when it does appear. Their policy is not to do so because of “geo blocking” issues–a rep told me earlier this week when I was inquiring about the status of yet another amazing clip of Bolt smashing yet another record. If you want to see the official version of that one, you’ll have to go to Universal’s site or this YouTube page.

But if you don’t want to wait, you have plenty of options, like this:

Of course, it’s a decent bet that if you’re reading this site, you’ve already heard of iFart. And perhaps the iFart v. Pull My Finger lawsuit. And maybe the entire array of flatulence apps now available for iPhone users.

Which is, actually, a serious story for Apple (AAPL): At some point it risks having the App store, and thus the iPhone, defined by novelty items.

The issue came up during the company’s earnings call yesterday, when Needham and Co. analyst Charles Wolf worried about a “race to the bottom” at the App store, and wondered if there was a way to “enable consumers to separate quality apps from the garbage.”

Apple COO Tim Cook’s response: “We realize there’s opportunity there for further improvement and are working on that.”

In the meantime, here are all of Apple’s fart apps in one handy link.

In response to a question during Google’s quarterly earnings call today, chief financial officer Patrick Pichette contended that the company could begin making a substantial profit, someday soonish. Here’s my paraphrased note from the call (I should have a verbatim quote later on): “In the not too distant future, we see it being very profitable.”

If Google really does pull this off, it will be a remarkable turnaround project. Google shelled out $1.65 billion for YouTube in 2006, but since then, has struggled to get a handle on the site’s potential and pitfalls.

YouTube is exponentially bigger than any competitor, but has struggled to turn its enormous audience into dollars. And its costs are exponentially bigger than any other competitor, too: Each video in its catalog represents a liability for the site, which has to host the clip and pay to stream it to users–and users are uploading something like 15 hours of video per minute to YouTube.

Google has never offered up any financial detail about YouTube’s performance, and didn’t during the call. Analysts have had good sport trying to figure out just how much revenue the site takes in and how much money it loses. One recent report concluded that the company was losing nearly half a billion dollars a year, while another pegged it at a more modest $174 million.

But the company has been fairly upfront about what it wants to do with YouTube: Get more professionally made videos, as opposed to stuff that users make themselves, on the site, and then sell as many ads as it can against them.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt did boast during the call that YouTube’s “monetized views” have tripled within the last year and that the company now sells ads against “billions” of video views every month. But this clip remains ad-free:

So says Viacom’s MTV, which reached that conclusion after testing various ad units in more than 50 million video clips it ran across its various sites. Viacom (VIA) says the intro-and-overlay package works best for advertisers’ “brand lift,” which it defines via metrics like unaided awareness, aided awareness and purchase intent.

And, it insists, customers like it, too! You can see an example at the bottom of this post, as well as a schematic that shows the order and timing of the ads.

This isn’t necessarily groundbreaking stuff: Overlays combined with another ad message have been popular with advertisers for some time. And when a company that makes its money selling ads boasts about how great its ads are, it’s best to accept those claims with just a pinch of reserved skepticism.

But these kinds of studies and promotions are taken seriously within the ad business, and Web publishers of all sorts are eager to find new ad formats (see–or try to ignore–the new ginormous ads rolling out this summer).

Meanwhile, as MediaPost notes, Publicis’s VivaKi is working with video providers, including Hulu, CBS (CBS), Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO), to produce its own “killer ad unit,” which is expected to debut next year. And Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, which once avoided ads like the plague, is now trying every possible combination it can find.

No way, says reader Joy Sherman, who insists that they’re “all over” YouTube, and pointed me to a clip from WMG’s new Green Day album.

And sure enough, there’s the video for “Know Your Enemy,” the new single from one of the label’s biggest acts.

But I’m not sure about the “all over” part. I can find one live version that’s pretty good. But the other clips I’ve found with the same label are either bait and switches or appear to be disabled in some way.

So. You can find some Warner’s stuff on YouTube, some of the time. But aren’t all of  Warner’s videos–and songs–supposed to be off of YouTube altogether, the result of a licensing dispute that flared up in December?

No official comment from either the label or the video site. But the unofficial story seems to be this: YouTube has variety of methods to take down content that’s not supposed to be on the site, including its ContentID system, which can automate the process for copyright owners that use it–that’s why YouTube wasn’t completely overrun with clips from NBC’s Olympics coverage last summer and why very little footage from ABC’s Oscars coverage made it onto the site earlier this year.

And Warner Music Group (WMG) is a ContentID user. But the system isn’t foolproof, and it’s bound to work much better when YouTube and the content owner are working together instead of fighting over royalties and revenue splits.

So here’s the Green Day video that’s not supposed to be on YouTube, and may not be for much longer once I post it. So enjoy while you can:

And, per MTV VP’s John Loscalzo’s request, I’ll note that Viacom’s video site has a perfectly legally version of the song that won’t get taken down. You can see it here.

[UPDATE: Negotiations between YouTube and music labels are already getting unpleasant: Warner Music's clips are disappearing from the site, and both sides are taking credit for the move.]

Universal Music Group officials told CNET this week that they’re going to make close to $100 million from Internet videos this year–an 80 percent increase–and that most of that will come from Google’s (GOOG) YouTube.

I believe that may be possible–in part because people close to Universal Music Group told me the same thing earlier this year. But I think that those YouTube dollars may not continue to increase at the same rate, whether it’s for Universal or any music label.

That’s because YouTube’s current arrangement with the labels is a money-losing one, people familiar with the company tell me. And that’s unlikely to continue as the company renegotiates its deals with the four major labels–UMG, EMI, Sony (SNE) and Warner Music Group (WMG)–which expire throughout next year.

Here’s how the current deals work: Whenever someone clicks on an official video that’s been sanctioned by the labels, YouTube has to pay the labels either a per-stream fee or a share of ad revenue associated with the clip, whichever is greater. Since YouTube is just beginning to get serious about selling ads next to its content, it’s usually paying the per-stream fee, which industry executives peg at about half a penny per clip.

That kind of deal might have been OK during Google’s go-go days, but it’s unlikely to fly now. And as Google execs start sitting down with the labels, it’s reasonable to think they’ve got much more leverage. While music videos are some of the site’s most popular programming–look at how many label-sponsored clips like Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” are among the site’s most popular offerings of all time–Google doesn’t need their blessing in the way that YouTube did when it was still transitioning from rogue copyright violator to upstanding citizen.

Meanwhile the labels are under great pressure to dig up dollars wherever they can find them because their core CD business evaporates day by day. Universal Music recorded some $4.4 billion in revenue during the first nine months of this year, so $100 million in high-margin video revenue would be a meaningful contribution to the bottom line. But it may be harder to get in 2009 than it was this year.

I can’t show you most of YouTube’s most popular clips here–the site disables embeds for those. But here’s a less-viewed one I do like.