It's a good point. If YouTube were my day job, I'm not sure that I would turn down the significant money from sponsorships. If I didn't personally dislike ads so much, I'd probably have already done it. Patreon may not require a huge shift in viewer relationship: Only 1-2% of my viewers support me on Patreon, but even this provides more revenue than basic YouTube ads. The vast majority of viewers benefit from the generosity of the 1-2%, and everyone seems OK with this setup.