I'm not saying no one will try to do this, but YouTube had the technical option of splicing ads directly into the video stream and simply not sending the actual video content for the duration of the ad for several years now. They chose not to do it. Potentially the lost revenue from people not using YouTube as much anymore / migrating to a different platform would be bigger here than the increase in ad traffic.
People who don't want to see ads (i.e. a large part of adblock users) are also more likely to engage in toxic (to advertisers and YouTube) behavior, such as intentionally clicking on ads but never buying anything (or even writing scripts to do that), or intentionally avoiding the advertised product, etc.
People who don't want to see ads (i.e. a large part of adblock users) are also more likely to engage in toxic (to advertisers and YouTube) behavior, such as intentionally clicking on ads but never buying anything (or even writing scripts to do that), or intentionally avoiding the advertised product, etc.