Sure you can. The problem with ads is that the ad-pushers basically forced people to use adblockers. In the early days, people put up with a few ads here and

Sure you can. The problem with ads is that the ad-pushers basically forced people to use adblockers. In the early days, people put up with a few ads here and there as the cost of seeing stuff for free, plus ad-blockers didn't exist yet. But then the ad-pushers kept making the experience worse and worse, and the ads more and more intrusive and obnoxious. People invented ad-blockers, and as the ads got even worse (and even dangerous: many were laden with viruses), more and more people turned to ad-blockers, even if before they were ambivalent or even wanted to support the advertising model. This story is as old as the WWW. It's the same thing now. YouTube ads weren't that bad before, but as several comments here have noted, they're getting worse and worse. So before, only die-hard ad-haters would employ ad-blockers, but now the advertisers are pushing more people to use them.