YouTube sneaked up on big media, then scared the hell out of them, then tried to do business with them, more or less unsuccessfully.

Now, three years after Google plunked down $1.6 billion for the video site, it seems to have figured out an approach that works for at least some big players: Hand over a chunk of the site to content creators, who get to control it, sell ads on it, program it with their stuff and share some of the ad dollars. Newest example, reportedly: Britain’s Channel 4.

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Warner Music and YouTube, co-owners of the one of the Web’s nastiest spats, are about to patch things up. How’d they do it? By cutting a deal that looks a lot like the one YouTube has already made with Universal Music Group.

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What do you do if you’ve got a grip on the Web/design software market? Expand into the Web measurement business, apparently. Adobe, whose Photoshop and Acrobat software offerings dominate the Web publishing business, will pay $1.8 billion to acquire Omniture, whose Web traffic measurement software is that industry’s standard.

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When will the online ad market finally start bouncing back? We’ve yet to see it in Q2 earnings reports from the likes of Google and Yahoo.

But one observer says it’s already here: Ad optimization firm PubMatic reports that prices for ad-network inventory it sees have increased 35 percent since the beginning of the year.

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Here’s a funding story you don’t see often, recession or no: A start-up buying back its shares from its venture capitalist, at a premium.

But that’s the transaction that video-chat firm Paltalk and Softbank have completed. Paltalk, which sold off 20 percent of its equity to Softbank for $6 million in 2004, has bought the shares back. No one has spelled out a purchase price, but I’m told the deal will be considered a “single” for Softbank–it gets its capital back, plus a return–which in this economy ought to be a home run.

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My colleagues over at The Wall Street Journal have been able to convince more than a million people to pay for full access to the paper’s Web site. Can it find even more people who are willing to pay for even more online stuff? We may find out: WSJ.com is contemplating what sounds an awful lot like trade newsletters.

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CBS has yet to announce any cuts or restructuring after acquiring CNET this summer for $1.8 billion. That changes today.

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