In an announcement on their blog earlier today, Ustream.tv has said that they’re giving their broadcasters new ways to monetize their streams:

Ustream Open PPV will allow any Ustream broadcaster to apply directly to Ustream for the ability to charge viewers for content. Once a broadcaster is approved for Ustream’s Open PPV program, they will be able to monetize their content via PayPal payments.

Let’s say you host a weekly show, such as a music show, a cooking show or a conference on Ustream, but you decide to produce an episode with special content – such as high-profile guests or a private lesson.

As an approved Ustream Open PPV user you’ll be able to charge your viewers to watch the premium content. And, voila – pay-per-view is democratized and broadcasters have a chance to attract some of Ustream’s 45 million monthly viewers.

Ustream.tv, established in 2007, has grown to a whopping 2 million registered users, who generate 1.5 million hours of live-streamed content a month. Giving them the ability to better monetize their content (and perhaps taking a small cut of that) will certainly end up netting Ustream a giant chunk of change.

The streaming-media website already uses advertisements to reap the reward of all those eyeballs, but as long as the PPV revenue exceeds that of the advertisement take, they’ll probably make out extremely well. Especially when current PPV television and streaming prices are so high, it would give smaller channels and broadcasters a huge incentive to move on board with them.

The Ad-Free Broadcasting option, however, doesn’t seem to fit the same paradigm as above. The announcement states that the broadcaster will be able to give their users an ad-free experience while streaming, but it doesn’t explain exactly how this functions (or if the broadcaster then must pay extra for this option.) As Ustream makes their money off eyeballs on their advertisements, this would become a money sink if they didn’t have a way to offset those costs. Value added model perhaps?

The two services have not yet been rolled out—and the only timeline given in the announcement boils down to “soon”—but Ustream does have the application online.

It’ll be interesting to see where this innovation takes them.