Honestly, these are ads that actually support the content I watch. So that's why I keep the adroll by default. AFAIK Google isn't getting any cut of it and that makes me feel good.
> Are you buying a product with a tracking code? If not, it's not supporting anyone
The YouTuber gets the ad money, even if the video is not watched. Though that does not mean you should skip the ad, because the videos have heatmaps and no one would advertise if the segment was always "cold". Though what the OP is saying is you can send strong signals (to both the advertiser AND the YouTuber) as to what ads you're willing to watch and not. In fact, in this way, it is a great tool for making a more efficient market as it increases information quality. But only under the assumption it is both pervasive and not used bluntly.
Remember in all advertising funded models that you are always the product. The market is for "high quality" (i.e. profitable) viewers, not high quality videos.
There's no bigger waste of bandwidth than ads, by the way. Ads are noise that's deliberately added to the signal just because it makes somebody somewhere money. These are actually the most charitable words I can use to describe ads.
If you indiscriminately watch or block that is a signal. Watch communicates potentially more because there's a secondary effect of some of those people buy the product. But by indiscriminately watching or not watching, we provide information about an interpolation along what was binary before. It is more complex to read, but now we can communicate that we don't dislike this add more than our willingness to support the channel. And on top of that, again our conversion rate. In a way, the discriminating information tells us something about the likely conversion rate. This is just more information, though that doesn't mean we are good at measuring it.
> The market is for "high quality" (i.e. profitable) viewers, not high quality videos.
To make it clearer, there are in fact ads that I do enjoy. This is true for all of us because an ad is so vaguely defined. During a political campaign I appreciate some ads because I want to know the candidates positions, when they are debating, and so on. Too much of it pisses me off, but that's different.
I also like ads that make me aware of certain things that provide utility to my life, but maybe not yours and this can be based on timing.
So stop rejecting this and recognize that these are all attempts at communicating these other factors. It's another variable in a system of equations.