[or_am_i]

The subscription revenues is a decent chunk of your lifetime value (LTV) as a customer, but it's not all of it. The goal here is to squeeze as much value from you aside from that as possible, measured mostly by two things, really: the direct ad revenue, measured by dollars that go on the balance sheet, and the indirect "engagement" value measured by the KPIs (think daily, weekly, monthly active users) that go into the quarterlies. The more time you spend on the platform, the more "things" you have got used to interacting with (aka day-to-day, week-to-week "retention"), the more they can potentially "sell" to you -- and it's not just ads / youtube subscription upsells, it can be and often is other "products" on the same platform: their music streaming, their search, their documents and emails, maps, drive, etc. etc. And it just so happens that the short format is _really, really_ engaging for many folks.

The more time you spend in the mall, the fuller are the bags on the way out, be it out of chance, habit, or convenience.

[imiric]

That's right, but it's not just products that they can "sell" you. It's all about your data, which is worth much more than any upsell opportunity.

Whether the user pays for YouTube Premium or not, they still have access to your behavioral data, your interests, they can easily determine your location, and so on. All of these data points contribute to your profile, which is a literal gold mine for their entire business. How much value they extract from it exactly is likely something not even Google knows. But given that it can be exchanged on dark data broker markets in perpetuity, the price can only go up.

It's a goddamn racket that needs to be made visible and subject to thorough public and legal scrutiny.

[Aurornis]

> How much value they extract from it exactly is likely something not even Google knows. But given that it can be exchanged on dark data broker markets in perpetuity,

Companies like Google and Meta don't sell your data, on dark markets or otherwise.

They keep it in-house for advertising targeting purposes.

If they sold it to other companies it would reduce their competitive advantage. It's not even worth it for them.

Google doesn't want to sell your data. They want to keep it internal as much as possible so their ad platform is valuable.

[theshackleford]

> The goal here is to squeeze as much value from you aside from that as possible, measured mostly by two things, really: the direct ad revenue, measured by dollars that go on the balance sheet

There are no ads on a sub, this doesn’t make any sense as such to the parents comment.

[pohuing]

They mean the premium subscription, not channel subscriptions.