One thing that you are missing that is super disingenuous, is the fact that YouTube premium does pay more.

But it really doesn't, and the three other channels I linked to, who are open enough to actually show their analytics page, clearly illustrates this.

If you take a video and you send it to 1000 people who have YouTube premium, and you make another video and you send it to 1,000 people who watch ads, the video you sent to premium users will pay more.

That's not how Premium works, though. Premium pays out based on views and time watched. Ads pay on by a) displaying ads. b) someone clicking on an ad, regardless of whether they actually watch your video for very long or not.

The major downside to Premium, however, is that larger channels can essentially monopolize on the Premium revenue, since it's not divided up equally and is disproportionately bias towards these larger channels. Small channels (<10million subs) won't make nearly as much from Premium as a channel like LTT.

Ads pay out differently, using quite a few variables, but it allows for even small channels to make money - way more money than Premium.

So, maybe this applies to the vast number of channels out there (i.e. the majority), but Premium doesn't pay more than ads. For the absolute top channels (by views and hours watched), they may very well be taking the biggest piece of the pie.

From the stats that you showed, you are lumping every single person who views a video in with the small fraction of people who have YouTube premium.

That's how YouTube counts it, and that's the most realistic way of doing it. So few people have Premium that it wouldn't make sense to exclude revenue generated by the vast majority of users.

I also don’t believe that you were continuing to get ads on your TV with an active YouTube premium subscription. I get 0 ads on any platform I’m signed into.

Sigh... even YouTube staff admitted it..

I had contacted YouTube support about those ads in early 2021, the same time that the above thread suggests these similar reports were being made, so you can believe it or not.