if there's no other option it's a still infinitely better than seeing HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA or another MANSCAPED ad

if it gets to that point I wouldn't mind the adblocker even automatically clicking the ad some percentage of the time, just to punish Google

I'd say closer to 99.9999% of users who can stream YouTube aren't trying to save data and just want to AdBlock.

In the specific case of YouTube, it does not. The content and ads providers are the same.