They're referring to creators, not the platform. For creators it's absolutely true that merch brings in more revenue than ads, and I assume by premium subscriptions they mean channel membership.
I also assume English isn't the author's native language because there are some small grammatical and structural quirks like this platform vs creators thing. It's very readable though!
I also assume English isn't the author's native language because there are some small grammatical and structural quirks like this platform vs creators thing. It's very readable though!