Advertising is the only business model that works at scale AND can support hypergrowth.
We know that subscriptions work at scale, mostly. YT Premium[1] has 100 million (Maybe 90M if there are 10M people only getting Music premium). But if YT was only available via subscription in 2010 during the gaming channel boom, it probably would have failed out of the gate.
But advertising is necessary to maintain the scale YT runs at today. 100 Million subscribers is nothing compared to the >2.7 billion humans that use it. Not all of them would pay even $2/month if you let them.
We know that subscriptions work at scale, mostly. YT Premium[1] has 100 million (Maybe 90M if there are 10M people only getting Music premium). But if YT was only available via subscription in 2010 during the gaming channel boom, it probably would have failed out of the gate.
But advertising is necessary to maintain the scale YT runs at today. 100 Million subscribers is nothing compared to the >2.7 billion humans that use it. Not all of them would pay even $2/month if you let them.
1: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/youtube-music-premium-1...