I feel like this is somewhat of a false dichotomy - I pay for plenty of content and have a good number of subscriptions, but that doesn't make the ads go away like magic.
If anything, I've seen more and more services where paying is just for "premium features," of which getting away from ads isn't one of them. Spotify is a key example - if you pay for premium you don't get ads interrupting music, but you still see their bundled advertisements on the home screen of the app, you get content suggested to you in a way that is very advertiser-centric, etc.
I think we should maybe split off the discussion of "how will these businesses get paid the way ads get paid" from "ads are bad and we should get rid of them." Frankly, I don't care if advertising as a business tanks and that takes other businesses with it. The externalities of surveillance capitalism are pretty shitty, and I'm fairly confident there are other ways for people to be productive within the economy that don't involve the invasive nature of today's advertising ecosystem.
If anything, I've seen more and more services where paying is just for "premium features," of which getting away from ads isn't one of them. Spotify is a key example - if you pay for premium you don't get ads interrupting music, but you still see their bundled advertisements on the home screen of the app, you get content suggested to you in a way that is very advertiser-centric, etc.
I think we should maybe split off the discussion of "how will these businesses get paid the way ads get paid" from "ads are bad and we should get rid of them." Frankly, I don't care if advertising as a business tanks and that takes other businesses with it. The externalities of surveillance capitalism are pretty shitty, and I'm fairly confident there are other ways for people to be productive within the economy that don't involve the invasive nature of today's advertising ecosystem.