But you're in the air fryer production business, not in the food video production biz (which is really saturated). So you likely don't have the skills to launch a food porn channel organically, so you have to pay a youtuber, which is not the worst, but the yield would be unpredictable (and more costly to test). Sounds overall better than Amazon ads, though.

This is up there with talk to your neighbors and put flyers on windshields.

It is a bandaid for a dysfunctional market with high transaction costs of trust(reputation) and triangulation(discovery).

Amazon only excells at low transfer cost - no negotiation and cheap delivery

So, your alternative to ads is… Ads? If you’re making a YouTube channel to promote your product, that’s still an ad. It’s just taking you longer (and probably more money) to get it out.