I have whitelisted some YouTube Chanel’s I like and you have a point about investing your own money into a business before you begin to get a return.
An ad here or there doesn’t bother me, my favourite way is where the channel builds it into their videos with an ad shoutout at the start and end but it’s by them (like nature box or that blue something or other that does meal prep and sends it to your house) not an abrupt change to an ad then back to the video.