Honestly, who here sees ads? My son owns a marketing firm and anytime I see his display it's shocking to me how different it looks than mine.
Definitely was not "great" but also not the worst thing. Pretty quickly I regained whatever sky-scraper ad-blindness I had in the early 2000s.
To be honest, I don't even mind it that much. At least I have some contact with what's going on out there in the ad space. But I watch 90+% of YT videos on other devices, not the TV.
I don't really use Youtube on my iPhone anymore because I know that any immediate gratification I could get from clicking on a video won't happen because of the ads. It's been very healthy for me in that way.
I don't have a Pihole because they seem to be cracking down on it. When I want to watch Youtube videos on the TV, I mirror my Laptop's screen.
I'm not even generally opposed to buying Youtube Premium either, the pricing is just off. And the tactics are just so scummy.
Your problem is selection bias. Here is HN, a group of mostly tech-oriented people who all have adblockers. The majority of people actually _don't_ have ad blockers, especially the older crowd.