The key difference that the previous poster outlined and you're missing is that with Kagi, you're the customer, while with DDG, you're the product. Kagi is thus incentivized to improve their offering to better fit your needs as a user, while DDG is incentivized to better serve their customers the advertisers.
20 seconds before a YT vid -- yeah maybe. Every 2 minutes during the vid? Not so happy.
ditto for a paid search. something on the side of the page, or something that's in the middle of results but still clearly an ad... maybe.
Also, saying 'no, this is why you think what you do' is not cool.
Non-techies don't give a damn about privacy.
Non-techies use Chrome over Firefox.
Non-techies use Windows and MacOS over Linux.
Non-techies use smartphones over phones.
Non-techies use smart TVs over TVs.
Non-techies use social media and have accounts using their real names.
I reiterate: Non-techies don't give a damn about privacy.
It's kinda like the cruelty-free labels on shampoo.
Anything in the world that's used by large amount of users are guaranteed to piss off some portion of them, because they can only focus on limited amount of features. Google had been like that. Firefox had been like that. When 70% of Firefox users are non-techies, Firefox has to start focus on the privacy niche to survive. Then the rest 30% vocal techies all start to protest and saying Mozilla has lost its direction and hope to regain market share.
When Kagi starts to gain popularity, I guarantee you they will start to polarize on their features, some of which you won't like, regardless of their business model, because the (majority) users they are catering to are also paid users, same as you. Only when they have only small amount of users could all of such be homogeneous enough so that every single feature they dish out is something you like.