I didn’t mind the ads back in the day, like 10+ years ago. They were ads for cars, cleaning products, food and drink, movies, games, theme parks, shit like that. Regular products, wasn’t really any super scummy stuff there. Now half the ads are scummy mobile games designed to cause a gambling addiction, impersonation frauds and scams, crypto doubling scams like it’s fucking Runescape, and a whole bunch of other shit that is actively harmful or brainrotting. I don’t mind seeing a funny little fox selling me laundry detergent, but the fart-piss-and-shit mobile ads are just genuinely revolting. If YouTube wants to make me watch ads, they should have some standards and vetting processes for those ads. Like, I still listen to the radio. I hardly notice the ads there because they aren’t actively making me feel worse physically for having listened to them. Very rarely I’ll watch regular TV and, again, don’t really mind the ads there 90% of the time.
And that’s not even touching on what the creators actually get from the hours of my life I would end up watching ads. If you donate 2 bucks to your favorite creator or sub to their patreon or whatever, you’ve probably given them more money than they would get from your ad views in a year. It’s not the loss of adblock revenue that’s making so many creators take sponsorships, it’s the lack of revenue in the first place.