This one might be harder, if YT just sends the ad like it was part of the video file, generating it on the fly, it's a lot harder to detect, and probably not too hard for them to do, but breaking timestamps is pretty bad for some types of videos, like tutorials.
And they get it for free, using your electricity and hardware for the AI and also avoids some liability that comes with your personal data/EU compliance.
DDG, i switched when startpage got bought, and it was terrible, but i stayed for the !bang and just used !g sometimes, but it kept improving while google got worse, IMO it's better than google now (and i didn't even get the AI stuff yet).
This one might be harder, if YT just sends the ad like it was part of the video file, generating it on the fly, it's a lot harder to detect, and probably not too hard for them to do, but breaking timestamps is pretty bad for some types of videos, like tutorials.