I don't believe you are right with that. If popular websites have more ads, we just see more ad blocker. I donate for my Mastodon and Lemmy server, but the vast majority of people will never pay for something like peertube, i just don't believe that.

PeerTube makes way, way more sense as a self-hosting platform for small and medium sized creators. That means the creators shoulder the burden of hosting their own content, and recoup those costs from their viewers via such vectors as Patreon. Having Patreon integration, direct one-time donation options, and user access levels for channels and/or videos so that subscriber-only content can be easily managed would go a long way towards this.

The Fediverse's current model of "donate to your serve admin using a completely disconnected 3rd party payment processor" isn't going to fly if you want actual popular anndprofrsional video content. Especially when the server admin is not the content creator.