[mrkramer]

YouTube wants you to transition to Premium because it is more profitable for them; they earn less with selling ads on the CPM and the CPC basis than they get from Premium. And they are pretty intrusive about it e.g. when you watch videos and you exit the YouTube app and shortly after that come back, pop-up says: "Wish videos kept playing when you closed the app?", "Get background play with YouTube Premium". Also when comments are disabled by content creators on music videos, they sort of hijack comments section and say: "Listen on YouTube Music", "Timed lyrics, sleep timer and more". Plus on top of that, they also got pretty aggressive with blocking ad-blockers....so definitely they want you to purchase and transition to YouTube Premium.

[bobdvb]

I've heard that Premium viewers account for a better income for content creators in comparison to ad-supported viewers. That's enough for me to be happy to pay.

[hnburnsy]

Not going to say you are wrong (+1), but look at the streamers who now overcharge for an ad-free version of their services. Part of that is to get scale for the ad-supported tiers.