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And at 12$ a month I still have to watch through all these 1min long sponsored segments.

YouTube without sponsorblock became unusable. For iOS I recommend uYouPlus: https://github.com/qnblackcat/uYouPlus

These sponsorships really only took off in the past 5 years as adblock soared in popularity. There may be a causal factor there.

Given how few people use adblock, I seriously doubt that it was what drove people to start putting ads in the video proper.

27% of internet users use adblock, but in certain youtube related audiences like tech it's probably above 80%.

70% of global watch time on YouTube comes from phones and tablets (2018). I don’t think adblock is an issue here.