Pretty good read.
https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads
Some interesting ideas. The question is: how much are you willing to "pay" for free content?
How about this hypothesis....
Historically, I have been unwilling to pay with interruption. So I have not watched broadcast TV or listened to broadcast radio since the late 1970s.
If I compare those to print media, which is the closest analog to the web, the ads are far more interruptive than a static ad on the print page.
Meanwhile, people are increasingly opting out of broadcast media because of the interruptions. So a paid Netflix or Spotify account without ads is much different than old school NBC or WKRP.
So the text-based media is becoming way more interruptive and the video/audio media are becoming less interruptive, so people find a given level of interruption more annoying than they do or did with broadcast media.
Just a random theory