This is one thing that youtube does really well though - on some other sketchy video player you never know whether the video will play even if the ad will (the worst is when don't let you know you're geo-blocked until after playing their ad) but on youtube the video always plays just as well as the ads for me.

True, but Youtube suffers from its own class of usability issues around ads/video. Eg. the other day I was watching a YT video and noticed that the top-voted comment was a particularly weird/creepy comment - so I absent-mindedly clicked the "thumbs down" next to it. Suddenly I was whisked away to a login page with no warning, interrupting the video. I immediately clicked "back" - and was forced to re-watch the entire ad before resuming my video. Stuff like this infuriates users - I'm trying to actively engage, and being punished for it?!

I've experienced the advertisement playing flawlessly followed by severe buffering for the real video.

It happens, but I've also experienced the stream playing flawlessly for the first 30s and then severe buffering for the remainder of the video, or the ad buffering and the video not. Network conditions change and buffering happens, but i haven't seen a consistent trend where the content is worse than the ad, like i have on so many other video players.

I am on a network with absolutely terrible latency. 500ms at its best and almost 7 sec at its worst. You tube videos will actually load and buffer... his "unskippable ad", will not.

Sometimes I have to wait 5 minutes to get through a 30 second commercial.

That's because Youtube natively integrates the pre-roll into its video player, while it's far easier for ad servers to just wrap the entire video player itself and (temporarily) replace it with their ad content.

Not saying it's right, but it's just the status quo of the moment.

The status quando, perhaps — or the Zeitstand.

What does that mean?

That depends on the platform. The youtube app on xbox is prone to screwing up after a mid-video ad. Not only will it fail to restart the video, it will make that specific video unplayable until youtube is killed and restarted.

My experience even on YouTube has been that ads buffer completely at full resolution, playing flawlessly, while videos are buffered minimally (pausing at the start and leaving to grab a sandwich does not result in the whole video loading) and often drop to lower resolution based on bandwidth.

This is why I can't/won't watch most videos on news sites. Not only is the "article" just a transcript of the video, but I frequently encounter what you're describing.