Did you know the software will only display none or at most a single 4-second skipable ad if you watch less than 15 minutes of youtube a month? I hear people complain about 5-15+ minute youtube commercials and laugh because I've never dealt with that.
The secret is to literally just stop watching youtube (and television in general). The content you find on Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, etc is all going down hill quickly.
No clue tbh how they track it - neither my partner nor I watch youtube much, so they don't see much traffic from our network. Don't know if they track usage by user, ip, cookies, etc