That's not really correct. While yes, ads don't pay great, this is generally the case, and maintaining servers with these amounts of data is really expensive. And with YouTube premium, actually, YouTubers get paid quite well. You can take a look at the LTT finances video. They make more money from premium than from YouTube ads, even though only a small fraction has it.

[–] ginza@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Is LTT the rule or exception tho for that premium vs ads metric? LTT viewers are more on the nerdy side so more likely to have adblocking software. Not saying the data is wrong or anything, I just wonder how it fares on more general topics like cooking, fashion, travel etc.

[–] Gladaed@feddit.org 1 points 2 months ago

Not to that extent, no. You can argue that not all watchtime is equal and hence the distribution of youtube premium money shouldn't be proportional but otherwise its hard to argue.