[cykros]

It very likely costs a bit if you think of it like a bean counter, in terms of "lost ad views." Though in fairness, if you're using RSS to browse Reddit, and you're not using an ad-blocker, you sound like you've all but gone out of your way to view their ads.

[ascagnel_]

I would think the opposite -- YouTube makes most of their money from advertising on videos, so the driving goal is to get users to watch as many videos as possible. The algorithm they use is a big part of that, but RSS feeds are probably a pretty good way to get people who only watch a handful of channels back the site (as the RSS feeds are just links to the video pages, without video embeds).

[cykros]

That's a valid take. Though, not all videos are equally ad-ridden. I suspect if I were to start using rss to subscribe to channels I'd be favoring those that don't make much use of them. But yes, it's not so cut and dry.