I will never pay for an ad-supported product. As long as YouTube accepts money from advertisers, their loyalty is split between users and advertisers. And advertisers will eventually win: if YouTube Premium gains traction, advertisers will be willing to pay more for access to premium users, and YouTube can only ignore that for so long. YouTube Premium will have ads eventually--it's just a matter of time. It already happened to cable, it happened to Prime, and it will happen to every streaming service that relies on ads eventually.

The only answer is to support companies that do not receive any money from ads (i.e. Kagi). Until that exists for streaming, I'm blocking ads and not giving them a cent.