Damn YouTube is pushing the ads these days. I don't remember last time I opened YouTube and didn't see an ad on open. I'm logged into Chrome, no VPN or funny business. What a racket.
No, nothing personally identifiable about the so-called key. Every person who visits www.youtube.com uses the same one; it's public. Anyone can see it in the HTML page source for www.youtube.com. No need to be "logged in" or whatever the latest scheme is to track people for advertising purposes.
I know the idea of paying for things isn't cool or whatever, but there's also the option of paying for premium, which also gets rid of ads on mobile without using having to sideload some sketchy app.
Ublock isn't sketchy. Nor is NewPipe, which allows you to use it (and have favorites) without an account so there's less tracking. Premium doesn't let you do that, you pay but Google still gets to datamine you as much as they want as well.