Since YouTube is starting to introduce even more intrusive advertising (ads on paused videos on YouTube TV), I figured I would complain about things other people have already talked about! First off, if you haven't already, install adblock on your browser. There is NO good reason not to have it and in the worst case scenario, a site won't let you look at without putting it on a whitelist. I really don't understand why anyone would choose to look at advertisements if given the choice to avoid most of them.
I first installed adblock in about 2018 when I realized it actually worked on YouTube, and it is the first thing I set up any time I have to install a new browser. A lot of people install adblock because of suggestive or scam advertisements, and those are huge issues, especially on YouTube. My main reason was and is that I will never care enough to even look at or click on them in the first place, so they were just a waste of time. Ads are just those things that get in the way of what I'm actually trying to look at and, to me, they won't really be effective for anything more than using up extra bandwidth. I know there's something to be said about how seeing an ad will always have some effect, even if it is very small. Depending on the context, seeing something repeatedly can add to its credibility in some people's minds. Ads can also make you aware something exists at all, and it's easier to sell a product to someone who knows what it is in the first place. Still, my main (and I hope most people's) decision on whether or not I buy something is just never going to be because I saw it in an ad somewhere. That's just stupid.
The sheer aggregate number of hours in my life I have saved by not watching someone try to sell me something I either already own, something I don't need, or something I would have preferred to never know I didn't want, is reason enough for me to do everything in my power to avoid advertisements when I can. If some company (Google) is going to use the most privacy invasive, needlessly complex, downright creepy methods to connect what I do online to who I am in a futile effort sell me garbage, I will put in my own effort to push right back like my stupid dog who always leans against whatever direction you try to move him in (I love my dog).
YouTube in particular has some of the worst ads on the internet. When I still watched their ads, it would always be the same one repeatedly for weeks on end, actual scams, fake mobile games, real mobile games (I HATE MOBILE GAMES), or straight up "adult content" let's say. I know YouTube and Google as a whole are insanely expensive to run, but if they ever want people who are having an objectively better experience by blocking their ads to stop doing so, they have to, at the very least, stop showing actual dangerous content in their ads. People should not be at the risk of losing their money on some AI crypto scam because YouTube doesn't do enough to moderate their platform.
In real life, I'm lucky enough to live in one of the few states that have completely banned billboard advertising, and every time I go somewhere like California or New York, the billboards always stick out to me. Billboards on freeways are kind of dumb, right? I feel like I would be infinitely more focused on the cars around me going 70 or 80 miles an hour than the burger king ad hanging over the highway's acoustic barrier. Aside from that, I don't really watch cable TV, I don't read the paper, and I usually don't listen to the radio, so it's also not an issue for me.
Honestly, you probably already used adblock on your computer, but a lot of people also watch YouTube on their phone, and that's more difficult to block ads on but I'll tell you what I do. If you've got an iPhone, sorry! I can't help you. The last time I used an iPhone was when my Grandma needed help sending a photo to her friend. If you use an Android phone, check out GrayJay. It's an app that allows you to follow creators across multiple platforms, but more importantly for me, it lets you watch YouTube without ads and even download videos on your phone. A more slimmed down version of this app specifically for YouTube would be NewPipe. You could also try ReVanced for a modified version of the actual YouTube app, but I haven't gotten that to work myself. GrayJay is not hard to set up, but there are a lot of customization settings to make the app work the way you want it to, and you might want to change some of the default settings. Something I changed was sending YouTube the info of videos I watched on GrayJay. I kept seeing videos I had already watched in my recommended because GrayJay gets its info from your recommended videos, but YouTube doesn't know you've already seen it without that option on.
I should say that GrayJay is paid software, but it's paid software in a similar sense that WinRAR is paid software. If you use it and feel they provided you with a good product, they trust you will have the decency to pay what they ask. I think they have made a good product and I recommend you do. If you can't or don't pay, It's better you to be able to just use it anyways and not download a potentially dangerous pirated version or something.
Another thing I have made use of on my browser is SponsorBlock (GrayJay and ReVanced also have this. I'm not sure about NewPipe). It's great that creators can find other, better sources of income with sponsorships on YouTube, but I feel like 90% of sponsor products are either useless or crappy. There's a reason they have to stoop to paying YouTubers to advertise their junk. The most use I would ever get out of watching a sponsor segment in a video is finding out a kind of product or service exists, and getting to look up the actually good alternative to whatever the ad was for. I don't have money to just buy random things from an ad I saw, and I'm definitely not just gonna buy something because a YouTuber got paid to tell me about it.
Anyways, I've gone through all I can think of and I have other stuff I need to do right now, so that's where I'm ending this. Thanks for reading.