The current deluge of ads feels less like an attempt to monetize, and more like an attempt to irritate me into paying for Youtube red (premium? plus? I don't know what it's called these days). This makes me less willing to shell out.
Youtube has allowed its algorithm to prioritize recommending radicalizing conservative content to people that have watched nothing but videos that have to do with videogames. That's not a model I want to support. That also makes me less willing to shell out.
I also (irrationally) still hold a grudge from when they took away the ability to play videos on the youtube app in the background in order to promote premium, which added back the functionality. This makes me less willing to shell out.
Content creators have for years been talking about how easy it is to get demonetized, how the payments get lower, how it's harder and harder to sustain a channel, how without clickbait and icon bait it's harder to get videos noticed, etc etc. This makes me incredibly unwilling to shell out.
So, to sum it up: If YouTube does a better job of policing their ad-content and makes them less overtly obnoxious, takes any steps at all to moderate the gaming-content to alt-right content pipeline, and restores their app's ability to play in the background without the premium version, and, probably most importantly of all, starts treating smaller content creators better and improving discovery of high quality, creative videos (over lowest-common-denominator clickbait bs) I'll consider paying them a monthly fee.