The thing that ad-hating people (me included) sometimes gloss over is that ads actually work. They work in the sense that enough people willingly actually click them and then actually willingly give money to the advertiser in exchange for something they offer. While it is annoying, and in a sense the 99.9% of us that don't click/buy any specific ad are paying the price (by wasting our attention for no personal gain), we all get tons of cool stuff for that price. Is it worth it? That's a different question, but it's not evil per se imo.
You could argue the influence ads have on people is now at a level of power (thanks in part to advancements by Google) that no one should have over others.
Except there hasn't been any successful go-to services for web subscription model. Google Contributor program is exactly the one, but it gets no traction from either users or publishers.
