Pretty confident you’re wearing rose tinted glasses. They had very few ads in the beginning. you could get through multiple episodes without getting them but they definitely existed. Maybe you had an ad blocker? I literally can’t find any evidence it was ever both and I was using it within the first few months of it’s public release

I’m pretty sure it was never free and without ads. There were much fewer and even sometimes would have really quick “thanks for watching now get back to the show” ads but ad free has always been paid