Yes, that's a very important part here. But that audience isn't 'yours', the content is yours, and if you drive any measurable new traffic to Youtube (which would be quite hard) then maybe you could lay a claim to that fraction of the audience. But on the whole Youtube functions as a cable network with a huge number of eyeballs on the other side and they (not you) control that network and they will protect the network at the expense of the individual content generators (as they should).

It's pretty easy to get sucked in to the illusion that Youtube needs the content generators more than vice-versa but Youtube is drowning in content, a lifetime worth of new content is uploaded every day so they have the freedom to pick-and-choose at their pleasure and if you want access to those eyeballs then you are playing their game.