I think within the video in question is the beginnings of a good justification for this. He views his job as getting his educational content in front as many people that can learn from it as possible.

Part of that is making sure he can afford to do so, so we should consider holistically whether breaking from the ad roll time format is better in the end or not. if he can keep up the quantity and quality of videos, then maybe it's worth breaking with that format. If he can't, then maybe it's not.

The is a similar question as to whether scientists should break from universities and corporate labs and fund their research and experiments without ties to those institutions, which will necessarily have some impact on the science being carried out in small and sometimes large ways. Personally, I suspect that there would be a large drop in both quality and quantity if this were to become the norm.

10-25 minutes or so seems like the sweet spot for a lot of podcasts, informational videos, presentations, and the like when they're genuinely trying to inform/entertain. It's hard to really communicate a lot of information or have a meaningful discussion in a shorter period of time unless it's very focused (how to...) and a lot of those would better be text and a photo. And a lot of hour long interviews etc. tend to feel like they go on too long.

Feels right to me. You can sink that amount of time into something without really feeling like it's a large commitment of time or energy, while also feeling satisfied if you liked it. It's just a shame that on youtube, the advertising pressure erodes such content away.

While there are logistical issues with shorter presentations at multi-track physical events, I've come to think that 25-30 minutes is a better sweet spot for conference presentations than 45-50 minutes. (With the exception of workshops/tutorials in most cases.)

And it's where I've ended up with my podcasts. Less than 12 or so feels like you're barely getting started and get past about 30 and, as a listener, I'm generally losing interest. It's no coincidence that longer professionally produced podcasts almost always have segments or otherwise break up the content.

So you're saying that if it's 10m then it's only because ads, and if it's longer it's only because more ads. There's no valid reason for a video to be longer than 9 minutes according to you. That sounds absurd to me. You're not actually arguing a point, you're just complaining about ads.

I also despise YT ads. (Embedded ads are less annoying because they can be at least slightly relevant to the content.) How much time do you spend watching ads? How much is your time worth?

Some recommend valuing your personal time at $50/h. YouTube Premium family membership is $18 and gives 6 people ad-free viewing which comes to $3/person/month. At these rates you break even at 3.6 minutes of ads. That could be just 2 videos.

I think there are valid reasons, just that you will rarely encounter such videos, be able to identify them if you do, be able to seek them out consistently, and that those who produce them will probably not do so for very long.

> and gives 6 people ad-free viewing which comes to $3/person/month

Six people who live in the same household, to be clear.