I read somewhere some time ago that putting a period after youtube.com in a youtube link prevents ads from playing. I’ve tried it for a while now, and it actually seems to work.
What’s even better is that any video you view from the sidebar of that original video will already have the period in the URL so also will play without ads.
https://www.youtube.com./[whatevervideoyouwanttosee]
Cool trick.
I use 1blocker, that blocks all YouTube ads on desktop, video and popover banners.
It worked for me for a while, but after a week or so I started getting ads again.
I have been a YouTube Premium subscriber for over a year now and it is one of my most used subscriptions. I find myself constantly using the background play feature to listen to content while the screen is switched off on my iPhone/I am using another app, and not having videos interrupted by ads is a huge plus.
I tried using YouTube Music but prefer Spotify and so don’t use it even though it is bundled as part of the subscription. One perk of living in India is that I am paying the equivalent of $2.50/month (!) for a family plan that I can share with six family members 
Wish this trick worked with the YouTube app on AppleTV…
Between Brave’s built in ad-blocker and the Chromium extension I inastalled which customizes YouTube’s UI and includes its own site-specific ad-blocker, I almost never see ads.
The one exception is in the last few weeks, in which prior to some videos a semoiopaque screen pops up requiring me to click past it (without any wait time).
It’s not particularly onerous and I expect that Brave and/or that extension I use will, as they have before, fashion a workaround.
I use YouTube often in evening and I have noticed in recent weeks there are more ads being pushed to the video content that I am watching. I use to get one ad per video, but now it seems like 3, 4 and even 5 ads which gets pretty annoying. Maybe the goal is to get more people to signup for YouTube Premium.
Use an ad-blocker like uBlock Origin or Nano Adblocker, and look at the extension I mentioned. (You’ll need to use a Chromium browser or Firefox.) I only get that screen I showed earlier, and even then it’s only the moment I click Play (I have autoplay turned off via that extension), so the annoyance is pretty minor to click Play then click Skip Ad.
I signed up for YouTube Premium a week ago, after fighting it forever, because a good buddy of mine programs about 100+ stations on their music service. I have to say, not having to SKIP AD in the first 5 seconds is really nice. and more importantly, as @Ajay noted above, the ability to continue listening to audio in the background of my iOS device is really nice. I hate giving Google money for this, but the truth is I have less relevant subscriptions, so I think I’ll keep it for the convenience. (and yes, my buddy’s YTM stations are GREAT.)
I’m glad you like the subscription too. Do post a link to your friend’s music stations!
