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But you would think that the company selling “targeted advertisements” wouldn’t have to show 10 ads before every video to get make profit.

Profiteering off of their established position.

Youtube PMs have OKRs

It is expensive but even then Youtube has been profitable for many years now. It represents 10% of Google revenue. 5-10 ads is a cash grab imho.

> even then Youtube has been profitable for many years now

How do you know this?

> It represents 10% of Google revenue.

Revenue != profit. Storing zettabytes of videos across the whole world, with the massive CDNs required to be able to serve that whole world isn't cheap. I can easily see YouTube being among the most costly things Google do.

unless it changed recently it has never been profitable

I expect they profit just fine off of the data they gather alone