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In what sense is Blender a customer if they aren't monetizing their videos, though?

In the same sense an open source project is a customer of GitHub's. The exchange of money is not required for someone to be a customer of a service.

That's a user.

Customers pay money. Users provide data and marketing.

Well, strictly speaking, this is a legitimate dictionary definition that doesn't involve money:

> a person of a specified kind with whom one has to deal

[edit] Youtube has 3 kinds of customers (or users, if you wish): publishers, viewers and advertisers. It makes sense to separate them like that, but not based on a "pays/ does not pay" criterion. If PewDiePie is a customer, then most definitely Blender Foundation is a customer too.

If money is the criterion of being a customer then they are one by driving traffic to other monetized videos, via recommended feed, or via follow up searches, that would otherwise not happen.

Anyone having a YT channel will tell that ‘suggested video’ is a dominant traffic source so it’s not an edge case.

In sum, YT was already making money thanks to Blender videos.

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