Ads will always be detectable because you cannot speed up or skip an ad like you can the rest of the video.

If they do make it so you can speed up or skip the ad sections of a video, mission accomplished.

If all else fails, I’d enjoy a plugin that just blanks the video and mutes the sound whenever an ad is playing–whenever it’s no possible to speed up or skip ahead. I’ll enjoy the few seconds of quiet, and hopefully I can use that time to break out of the mentally unhealthy doom spiral that is the typical YouTube experience.

My brain just does that anyway, after decades of ads I just tune them out. And at home I use ad blockers.

That’s not how it works. Or, rather, that’s not only how it works. Sure, advertisers dream of users who see an ad once and run to buy a product. But ad effects are spread over time. They build brand recognition. They fake familiarity. Say you are in a supermarket and you want to buy a new type of product that you haven’t bought before. Very likely you’ll pick something familiar-sounding, which you heard in an ad. Ads pollute the mind even if the most obvious effects are, well, obvious and easily discarded, more subtle influence remains.

If it makes you feel any better, I intentionally never use products that have intentionally repetitive messaging or earworm tendencies out of spite. Though I know I’m probably in the minority