Well it is only as valuable as its users feel it is.

That's ostensibly what Youtube is, a big pile of users AKA consumers that Google promises to smartly match with relevant ads to improve the chances those consumers spend money with a company they saw an ad for. It fails to live up to this goal constantly, and seems to just barely check if an ad is relevant anymore.

Google essentially holds creators hostage in this arrangement. Creators provide content the consumers want, but they only get paid well if the consumers don't skip the ads. So creators have to pander to what Youtube as a platform "seems to want" (thumbnails with :O face are so hot right now) in hopes that the algorithm will deliver videos to consumers who want them AND they are shown ads they don't immediately hate and skip. If any of those things fails to happen, they don't get paid as much as they should and it's not even their fault.