I don't care when YouTube does a buffer thing because blocking ads for me is about distractions and context switching. My cognitive load is already very high and it's extremely frustrating to have to filter out more garbage.
You could just pay the $13/month? Would save the worries about context switching further taxing your already high cognitive load? And I would expect your high cognitive load helps you earn well above $13/month?
Except they want it both ways. I tried Youtube Premium for a few months. Slowly but surely the ads came back, so back to blocking and not paying I went.
Youtube premium can look very different between places/people. Many with premium still see them. Youtube seems to be testing various markets to see how many ads it takes before people cancel their subscriptions. Also, you have to accept google cookies and such for them to identify you as a subscriber, so many privacy-focused users will see ads regardless of premium subscriptions.