Is it just me or is this a thing now? Or is it an artefact of them getting bigger, hiring people, and so pumping stuff out faster.
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Maybe I don't follow the same people you do but I have found that creators are making longer videos and absolutely stuffing them full of advertisements as opposed to churning out daily videos (bar for an Advent Calendar - it is that time of year). I think YouTube is financially incentivising them to maximise the number of advertisements in their videos, particularly the five ad breaks every few minutes ones for two reasons - it makes the creator a lot more money compared to the usual two ads every five minutes model and it nudges viewers to subscribe to Premium. Even creators want people to move to Premium rather than watch ads. One creator I watched (I think it was EEVBlog but don't quote me on that) stated in a video from his analytics that despite Premium viewers making up a tiny minority of the viewership, it's around half his income compared to the free ad supported viewers (who don't ad-block).
Making longer videos keeps people engaged with them, boosts their revenue and takes revenue away from other creators. YouTube content creation is a competitive market like any other business and all the creators are competing with one another for ad/Premium money.
"Second monitor Youtube" is basically one of the most profitable forms right now. You make a two hour video or "podcast" that can be stuffed with ads and has a low clickthrough rate, and it'll do leagues better than 20 10 minutes videos that used to be the gold standard.
Most don't seem to be dragging it out purely for the sake of more ads (like the 10 minute videos used to be) but because of how well that does, especially in terms of pushing people towards their streams/patreons/etc to give money more directly and getting them higher viewcounts.
The balance of that is how rigid Youtube's flagging system is, and losing a 2 hour video of a 2 second bit is way worse than losing a 10 minute one. So you need a very meticulous editor constantly working.