This is the only way to enjoy youtube without a premium account, and even with a premium account it's still far better to use a proper player like mpv.
But it seems likely to me that YouTube will eventually start embedding the ads more inextricably into the video streams while downloaded. Especially as more people use tools like youtube-dl/yt-dlp to circumvent ads.
They'd have to vary the ad timing to get past sponsorblock, and generating a video for each viewer to do targeting. I can't imagine Google going back to content-based ads after all this time.
But it seems likely to me that YouTube will eventually start embedding the ads more inextricably into the video streams while downloaded. Especially as more people use tools like youtube-dl/yt-dlp to circumvent ads.