No, this is not the reason. People hate ads, generally.
Go ahead and block ads. I use a PiHole myself (but also subscribe to YouTube Premium, so..). But stop complaining when companies try to do something about it, or acting like there's some optimal amount of ads.
Just as it's your right to block ads, it's their right to block ad-blockers. This is the game, it's been played for 20+ years.
Why are you dismissing offhand the idea that there is an appropriate level of ads that users will feel is a fair trade for the content they're getting? You're just completely rejecting the idea that there's any middle ground at all. Why would it not be the case that some reasonable limits on ad volume, content, maliciousness, and total percent of time covered by ads, could restore some goodwill toward ads? People hate ads because ads are unbelievably fucking terribly awful. Ads are as awful as they could possibly be, and nobody seems to be making any effort to sit down and say "what if our ads weren't fucking awful tooth-pulling assaults on human reason and consciousness? What if we actually changed that?" Nobody is saying that, and people like you are simply dismissing the idea that it even matters.
Why are companies trying so hard to do something that their customers hate? We all know the answer, we know we aren't "the customer", it's this perversion of incentive that people are complaining and should complain about