It’s not the an ad but several lengthy adds. If they want to kill their platform they should just pull the plug.

You should look into how much YT actually does for its “partners”. It’s barely anything if you aren’t Markiplier tier famous, and if you do anything even mildly upsetting to the almighty advertisers (which can anything from using a curse word, to acknowledging the existence of death, to literally no reason at all in some cases) then they take away even that. That’s why everyone has Patreon accounts and sponsors. Because relying on Google to provide for the people who keep their platform alive is a losing game, so they need to seek other sources of revenue than their cut of the ad money.