I 100% guarantee you that eventually the $15 tier will have “limited” ads and then the upcoming $25 tier is ad free, rinse and repeat. It’s happened with cable, it’s happened with streaming, it’ll happen with YouTube.
Doubt it. Most streaming sites are still ad free and their prices only increased with inflation. Both YouTube and creators already get way more revenue from premium subscribers than ad watchers so I doubt that'll change this decade
US dollar inflation was 32.1% over the last decade.
Netflix increased their prices from $10/mo to $16/mo in 2011 and faced massive backlash with tech journalists praising Blockbuster and saying "Up until today, we loved Netflix":
Today Netflix charges $15.50/mo. The price rises and falls every 2 years and we get the same whining every 2 years: https://flixed.io/netflix-price-hikes