Are we talking about influencers, or “the world’s brightest minds”?

They're working together. Youtube algorithms compute the most likely influencer that is going to occupy your attention and serve you advertisements in the process.

"Nobody is addicted to ads" is true if you think only about the pop-ups and couple-second videos as "ads" - but the concept of advertisements is much wider than that. Some adverisements may not even be presented as such - they may be presented as "useful content", but which is chosen above other such useful content by the virtue of being paid for to the advertising company.