(Putting this in IMHO because as far as I can tell, there isn’t one simple factual answer to this… maybe it differs depending on topic, specific individual, etc.? Not sure. Anecdotes welcome too.)
I subscribe to YouTube Premium at about $13/mo. I tend to watch content mostly from the same dozen or so channels. The one I get most excited about is Practical Engineering, which puts out an hour-long video every month or so. But the cat’s favorite channel is Birder King, and I’ll sometimes keep it on for him when I leave the house.
So, using those two examples, each month I watch about an hour of Practical Engineering (in one video) and the cat watches maybe twenty hours of Birder King (in maybe 4-5 videos). Is the revenue split between them closer to 1:1 (channels subscribed), 1:5 (videos watched), or 1:20 (hours watched)? Or some other formula altogether?
Is my cat taking precious income away from our poor, starving engineers? Each Practical Engineering episode takes weeks of research, filming, editing, model-building, interviews, fact-checking, animations, etc. Birder King just sticks a webcam next to a bird feeder. Is it a way to just game the YouTube monetization algorithm?