That's not really true. Youtube ads specifically were way way milder and rarer years ago when way less people used Adblock.

And global warming was much milder when we had more pirates in the world [1]. Correlation is not causation. In the same period, YouTube's management style and public-facing attitude have changed dramatically, Google's general attempt at being the "good guys" has pretty much vanished, and beancounting has taken over as the guiding principle in many respects. I have zero reason to believe that had Adblocking not been a thing, there would have been any significant difference in the frequency or intrusiveness of the ads YouTube shows.

[1] https://swizec.com/blog/pirates-downfall-causes-global-warmi...

Correlation is not causation but negative correlation is even more surely not causation and what I was replying to was

>Ad-blockers took off once they started throwing animated banners at us

which is still not true. When they took off the ads were still minimal.

That was when it was still a growing business. Uber was cheaper when investors paid for it, too.

I wouldn't call them "milder". They weren't static ads. They were video ads. Often loud and un-skippable for a certain small amount of time. This is definitely equivalent to a "punch the monkey" ad.