I believe you can select how much you are willing to pay per view. When AdWords sees an opportunity for an ad, it will find all the relevant ones and then pick the highest bidder. So you could pay as little as 1 cent per view, but I think those will not be very well targeted. I've also heard that AdWords give you lots of views, but very little interaction. The people watch your video as an ad before watching another video. Most of them can't wait to skip it, and they really won't pay any attention to it, plus if they skip it too soon, it will screw up your retention. So I would think that for best results you should target very specific audiences, to ensure that you aren't just wasting money to increase the view counter. Those specific target audience will require you to pay more, to guarantee that your ad is selected.
I've also heard that you can buy the top suggested video spot for your own video. I would think that this approach is much better. Youtube cares about watch chains, they monitor how people get to your video and where they go next. If you pay to get your videos into a popular view chain, it could jump start your videos.
I haven't done any advertising, this is just what I've read from these forums.
