Preface: I am a Youtuber who prefers not to do sponsored segments but has done some in the past.

> Advertising tends to naturally weed out, for me, the ones who are not as passionate about what they do.

This is a remark I see over and over again, basically "You're only in it for the money" once you do sponsors. Here's the thing that no one really gets, Youtube is not a hobby. I don't care what the channel topic is, building cars, lathe projects, tech reviews, pets, etc. The hobby for the creator is the subject, not the video production platform or process. Youtube is not social media, we're not posting videos so our friends can see what we're up to. The entire system is built completely differently from something like facebook, twitter, instgram, etc. It requires actual work. Planning videos, making thumbnails, responding to comments from strangers, making business connections, and more when you get larger. "Making videos" themselves isn't just waving a camera around while you do something either and requires it's own thought and effort.

Anyone who has reasonable success on Youtube can be monetarily rewarded for that. That alone creates an expectation that it could possibly be a source of income from the outset. If you can achieve making it a sustainable income source capable of being lived off of, why wouldn't you? You can continue to do and build upon your actual hobby, whatever it is. But instead of working a different "conventional" job you do video production, PR, marketing, and potentially advertising. The problem is that the on platform advertisement revenue is not enough to cover the effort and resources required to make videos as you become more serious about it. Part of this is on viewers because Youtube knows if you are using adblock. I can see this on the back end, on average for my channel less than 50% of views are monetized. So if nobody used adblock I could make literally double the amount on just the on platform ads alone. But that's not how it is and it's not going to change.

So you have to do something else as well. Personally, as a Youtuber, I see two revenue paths. You either go crowd funded with something like Patreon or do sponsors. You can do both but unless it's well done and relevant it feels like double dipping to me. But the in video sponsors aren't any different than the other advertisements on platform on youtube, except they aren't blocked by adblock. (Youtubers properly disclosing the ads is a completely separate issue that should not besmirch everyone who does it.) Youtubers don't get to choose their sponsor partners unless they are gigantic and have to take what they can get. We get tons of spam offers that try to screw us, taking real ones from even slightly reputable companies can make a big impact. Youtubers should do a better job of picking them, but not everybody understands something like what a VPN actually is and how is just moves your endpoint to a different set of private hands. But advertising is tied to media and not new at all. Complaining about a slightly more effective version of it is just naivety about how the service works and what the people who make the videos do.

TL;DR: Youtube is not a hobby, the subject Youtubers talk about is. Youtube is a job that takes real work, but it can't pay well enough, partly because of adblock. In video sponsors are just a different ad method that directly pays bypassing the adblock problem.

PS: I do not use adblock, partly because it feels hypocritical to make money on ads and then block them for others. The internet is indeed annoying without it, but I manage just fine.