I have YouTube premium/red/whatever and don't see ads. The natural state of YouTube is unbearable due to the profusion of ads. People watching YouTube either have high tolerance for ads or a method to avoid them.
(Even though the recommendation system is overall awful and I can't believe an army of engineers have actually been working on it for a decade, but I digress)
I'd say that's passion and i see nothing wrong with getting rewarded for doing something you like and other people enjoy watching.
However, this often results in videos that are unnecessary bloated to fulfil the requirements to place more ads, deceptive/misleading titles, or 10-minute-videos about something that could be explained in 30 seconds.
But ads on content where all the revenue goes to google without a penny being sent to the creator? That's not tolerable.
Now its 600KB (100KB compressed) JSON + additional 8MB desktop_polymer.js (1MB compressed) that needs to be compiled/interpreted before anything starts showing on the page - its all dynamically generated Client side. 1MB js player is on top of that.
How does that work when you’re out on your iPhone and just want to check a video-link someone sent you?
Oh wait. It doesn’t.
First, choose to go out with a more open platform (if only by a bit) that at least allows you the freedom to install apps which don't necessarily come with a corporate overseer's approval.
Then, install the Youtube Vanced app.
That said, either youtube-dl or Invidious [1] will do the trick. The latter can be self-hosted and emulates a more familiar YouTube experience (minus the tracking/recommendations).
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Shut up and take my money
Technically, I signed up for Google Play Music way back when it was initially launched, and have since been upgraded to YouTube Red/Premium and have kept it.
Unfortunately, in recent several weeks I started to see an occasional ad even in Brave. As for now, these ads are really rare, don't think I get more than a couple a week. But boy are they annoying.
Even in such a mobile browser where all the videos are muted by default, these ads find a way to conveniently unmute themselves and delight your surroundings with loudest and cringiest lines/tunes.
YouTube must be actively making changes to their ads in attempt to bypass ad blockers. However, I still think that Brave is a great option as (based on their forum) ad filters are constantly being worked upon.
PS: I've also tried Firefox Mobile with uBlock Origin addon. As expected, ad blocking works just fine, but page loading times are way slower compared to Brave which is based on Chrome.