My opinion on this is that they’re already getting money from ads

Are they? With so many people, especially here on Lemmy, willing to go hard to adblock plus a steadfast refusal to pay for YT Premium I’d guess that most smaller YT Content Creators are getting very little ad revenue. Without Merch sales and Patreon how are they supposed to get any money to support themselves?

I understand your point about being a walking billboard and I feel the same way but these days it just feels like no one wants to contribute in any way to help support small time creators.