YouTube may be where the people are, but advertisers increasingly are challenged to connect with them. A new poll by Harris Interactive has found that 73 percent of frequent YouTube users say they would visit the site less if it started including short video ads before every clip.

"To be fair," says Aongus Burke, senior research manager of Harris Interactive's Media & Entertainment Practice, "as far as we know, YouTube has never publicly said that they are considering including short commercials before the clips on their site. However, we wanted to see how much resistance there would be at that extreme. Apparently, there is a lot."

In the last year, TV networks have successfully experimented with airing of TV episodes with commercials on their websites, with nearly as many online adults (41 percent) saying they have watched a video at a TV network website as they have at YouTube (42 percent). It seems like TV networks can get away with advertising more easily.

"Indeed, we have seen in previous data," says Burke, "that consumers as a rule are not averse to watching commercials online in order to catch an episode of a TV show they would otherwise miss. Yet those who are accustomed to finding and watching everything for free at YouTube may have developed a very different set of expectations for the site."

A recent Jupiter report, for example, found that the majority of those who watch video online prefer content to be both free, and free of ads, although, 21 percent prefer ads over paid content.