I do pay for Youtube premium, because without that, the amount of ads really annoys me. I usually buy ad-free versions of freemium Android apps. There must be some value to pay for; making the free version annoying subtracts enough value that paying for the uncrippled version becomes a reasonable choice. (I usually buy paid versions of open-source apps to keep them open-source; that's also a value.)
Also, a lot of people are very much not well off. They often don't have that extra $5; I remember being in that state myself as a student. So they will put up with free shit, even if it has a noticeable shit component :(
Ads shown in Gmail are not based on the contents of the emails, rather on other characteristics inferred from the associated Google account [0]. It's a bit of a "splitting hairs" thing, but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison in this case.
I'm not familiar with Hulu.
> How many people are flocking to use a paid privacy focused search engine like Neeva? Hell even DDG hasn’t taken over and it’s free!
Those search engines are not as good as Google. All things being equal, I posit that people would prefer products that respect their privacy.
> You don’t have to guess.
Again, that's beside the point. The point is that people should be given the opportunity to make an informed choice about whether a company is allowed to process their personal data for the purpose of showing "more relevant" advertisements, and that is a Good Thing.