If you can afford it, YouTube Premium is well worth it. It's high up on my list of time and annoyance saved vs $ spent.
I've been consistently exposed to great creators even if they have low viewcounts, and they know which creators I'm subscribed I don't watch at upload time vs which ones I do
I do keep an eye on what do I signal engagement to, so I guess It's not a perfect sample, but still
Hulu is doing something similar using crazy loud ads on their non-premium subscription. Searching their support forums for "ads too loud" brings up threads going back multiple years. I thought this practice was illegal, but perhaps there is a loophole when it comes to streaming content?
Yup, and Cable was the YouTube Premium of TV back in the day. Advertising is cancer - it slowly consumes every communication medium it touches.
Remember: by paying to remove ads, you self-identify as someone who has disposable income and is willing to spend it, making you the prime target for advertisers. This money isn't going to be left on the table to waste forever.
For example I have mutiple YT accounts, that I use for topical things, like one for Technology, one for current events / news, one for live streams, and one for political.
I would need 2 or 3 Premium subscriptions, when all I really want is to have different subscription feeds that are contextual
There's a hell of a lot of money it takes to maintain a content hosting infrastructure as massive as YouTube, so I always shake my head when people naively expect they should get something like that for completely free.
Then again, I could have said the same about many YouTube changes in recent years - that it will be difficult to convince people to like the changes. They were all unpopular and the platform keeps going strong.