I feel like calling this an ad is a stretch, I get it ads suck. I hate ads, too. This is just the merch of the channel you clicked on, though. It's fine, I don't have it in me to care about a few images below a part of the user experience I never look at.
let's say you go to a movie theatre, they sell food in the concessions on the way in. is that an ad? or are they just selling shit and also you're gonna go watch a movie. maybe you want popcorn. maybe you want a mug.
if they were to play an ad roll for all the merch before the video, sure, that's an ad. but that's not happening, op just went to a users youtube page and saw that there is a section for the users merch.
so you are accepting of the entire screen being a merch plug if it's a video segment, of if it's in the description which either does indeed take up screen real estate, or you are only accepting because you don't look at descriptions.
but you aren't accepting of merch in a small section that used to be basically nothing?
i just don't follow your logic, it just sounds like you saw something new and immediately reacted without thinking it through.
if this was an actual ad, people would be with you on this. but it just isn't. it's some merch that the youtuber sells. fuck them for trying to make a living right? they can only make a living if they actively hide any way that they could make a living.
I hate ads with my whole heart because it doesn't actually support the creators but come on man merch is directly supporting the creators. Most of them prefer if you support them through that even LTT says they got more support from merch.
Starts to seem to me that you'd get frustration more than anything else out of whatever you try to do to help or please or go along with rules of a digital/social platform company...
Yeah I wouldn't argue against all the things YouTube has made possible to, benefitted and offered others. I have used YouTube actively too.
There's always good and bad to everything.