Metacafe’s little experiment of paying for top videos seems to be paying off. The Producer Rewards program pays $5 for every 1000 views if a video breaks 20,000 views, a move CEO Arik Czerniak describes as a way to encourage User Licensed content. The Israel-based company is one of the faster growing video sites, and if Czerniak is to be believed, the producer rewards program has helped the company get further momentum.

“We were hoping to get 1000 videos accounting for 10 percent of our total traffic by end of 2006,” Czerniak told us. “We are now getting about 300 videos being uploaded a day, and the producer rewards program already accounts for 8 percent of our total traffic.” The company is getting between 1.2-to-1.5 million unique visitors a day, he says.

The company, which recently signed a deal with crime television impresario Steven Bocho, is in negotiations with other legal content owners such as NBC and Viacom. Most large media companies are feeling encouraged about the online video opportunities. In a recent press release, CBS executives claimed that more than 300 clips that were uploaded to YouTube garnered a total of 29.2 million views, averaging 857,000 views per day, since the service launched on October 18.

CBS executives claim that the ratings of network’s shows have jumped after clips were uploaded to YouTube. CBS’s “Late Show with David Letterman” has added 200,000 (+5%) new viewers while “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” is up 100,000 viewers (+7%) since the YouTube postings started.

This is why Czerniak feels more encouraged about signing up large media companies as content partners. Not shy to take a swipe at his rivals, he pointed out that the top 200 videos on Metacafe had more views that the top 200 videos on YouTube. Maybe because the videos are longer, and have colorful titles such as Celebrity Upskirt and Britney Spears’ stones.