YouTube has already been helpful to a degree. Sometimes I’ll open their AI summarize and it will give all the details along with timestamps. There are videos where I saw the summary and passed on watching because the video was mostly filler material.

I’m in the same boat. USA here and only the initial start menu tiles had junk but removed them long ago. Next time I go on my computer I’ll look closer. Maybe my brain just auto filters ads out at this point.

YouTube lived off venture capital, search sponsorships, and content hosting. Venture capital is long dried up. Search sponsorships are just advertisements but clogging your searches. Content hosting isn’t really needed anymore since every large media company has their own streaming platform. Lot has changed since 2006.

https://youtu.be/5QH8Dj6g_Nk Might be what OP watched too. I was surprised they’ve gotten so cheap.