Creators also get paid for in video ad reads and product placement. Media providers also make money on data collection regardless of the ads you skip. And furthermore advertising prices have always been based an statistics of reach. Companies like youtube have clearer data than the old Nielsen ratings but they’ve had a pretty accurate numbers of how many users skipped ads through time shifting too that have only gotten better since.

It legally is not piracy in most places. Ethically just watching they are probably making money off of you even if you skip the obvious ads but if you really want to go over the top you could still skip and just find other ways to give money to the platform or creator.