YouTube has just concluded a deal with magazine publishers IPC Ignite and Bauer that will allow them to sell advertising around their own content, much like the deal Channel 4 has with YouTube. As the IPA's Sam Finlay says: "We're directly monetising our content, which we put up on our site as well. It expands the reach of our commercial partners and gives us extra reach."
The recognition of all parties in arrangements such as these is that everyone can make more money by working together. Bebo was one of the first online destinations that understood the benefit of having professional content on its site.
The extra traffic it brings means they can make more money elsewhere on the site, including around their own content, while allowing third-party owners to preserve their exclusive right to monetise their content themselves.
This strategy is making some online destinations more akin to TV platform owners such as Sky, Virgin or BT Vision - partners for distribution rather than rivals. It doesn't remove all tension and suspicion from the relationship, but it does open up more possibilities for all parties.
Dawn Airey also commended collaboration this week - in her characteristically colourful way - as she spoke about potential partnerships between TV companies: "They are grown-up enough to realise there's a time to compete and fight like rats in a sack and there's a time to put aside your differences and form partnerships that are mutually beneficial."
So, driven by the economy, media owners are learning to distinguish between a competitor and a collaborator. Media agencies' track record in this sphere is less well-developed, aside from those shared resources that are imposed on them by their parent companies.
There was a time when rival agencies would collaborate on ambitious research - who remembers the Quality of Reading project? But now agencies invest in those studies alone, more as differentiating marketing tools rather than for enlightenment.
TouchPoints could be seen as the ultimate collaboration between IPA agencies, but I have heard several participating agencies question it on the very grounds that everyone else has the same data and it can't be used as a competitive tool.
It would be sad if desperate rivalry stopped the industry working together more. Cut-throat competition can wound all parties.