No, he was smart enough to do whatever he did but lucky enough to get that payout. Over time, someone will always optimize for SEO, AdSense & shareability better.

Perhaps their entire strategy was accidentally optimizing for a keyword that was highly valuable for a short while, who knows?

For a short while YouTubers would mention getting a mortgage in the middle of their video just to improve the rate by tricking the algorithm into showing expensive mortgage related ads.