As soon as you start charging a fee, you eliminate huge swaths of the world population. Ads are an equalizing force.
Or we can talk about the purposeful obfuscation of the industry. How you have no way of verifying clicks, or views, or anything. How Cost Per Click is just an arbitrary number you and unknown others compete against, all for the pursuit of fake traffic and the hope of winning the advertising lottery.
It is more worth your time to play Three Card Monty on the street corner, because at least all parties agree that game is fixed.
When the online advertising bubble pops, it's going to go off like a fucking bomb, and we'll all be lucky to survive it.
Just because some people have $1000 doesn't mean that $5 isn't better than $0.
And even if it is a zero-sum game, it would be a form of wealth redistribution from rich consumers to poor consumers. No one wants to advertise to poor people, they only want to advertise to rich people. But making a product ad-supported makes it free for everyone. Rich people's eyeballs are used to subsidize poor people's content.