I tend to think of this as the Money Ball-ization of the process.
In the book Money Ball (yet to see the movie), the Oakland A's realized - despite the hype - the big names aren't cost effective. That instead by going for people who would consistently get on base and score runs, they could build a roster that would win regularly without spending stupid amounts of money. You don't finish 1st but 2nd or 3rd might work.
In terms of content, it may be too expensive to for that 1M views post but if you can get 10 that get 100k views each, the advertising numbers work out the same and probably for a fraction of the cost. And betting everything on that single post is risky anyway because what if it doesn't catch?
There's also a marketing aspect as that BIG post has to have broader appeal. The smaller posts can hit individual niches.
In other words, when you have solid content you don't have to constantly churn out garbage and then blanket said garbage in ads.