Dan Edmunds being called a YouTuber is pretty comical. I think you mean why are so many OE suspension engineers turned technical editors for various legit, legacy publications so verbose. Dan’s an auto nerd and that’s okay.
But also since you asked. There is an actual reason YouTube are made longer and longer by “YouTubers” as a way to potentially, emphasis potentially, create more ad revenue. Since you enjoy in depth explanations, I be copied and pasted the following from Reddit:
“its not the length of the video as much as the amount of time people are watching it.
a 5 minute video that people watch all 5 minutes of, AND gets people to click on other videos (and not leave youtube's website) will get more valuable ads, a 10 minute video that people stick around for a minute and a half and then leave the website? it won't get as valuable of ads, if any at all.
my average view time was just over 2 minutes, but I had a bunch of sub 2 minute videos, that got reasonable views. I moved those over to my other channel, and my view time jumped by 30 seconds and my channel CPM jumped as well.
The trick for your channel is to get people to stay within youtube, and watch as much content as possible. that's why channels like Phillip defranco have links in their description to other youtube videos. that boosts their youtube rankings significantly when people click on those.
Your main focus should not be length of video, but content of video. Get your content up, get people sticking through the whole video, and you'll earn more money”
