I'd rather make few, but meaningful contributions to creators with a system like Patreon or Kickstarter, than make many "micro", meaningless payments without a clue where my money is going.

This is failed from the get go. The whole idea that the program is going to determine where your attention goes, and how that relates to your contributions. Maybe I read a blog I contribute to, and it takes a lot of time, yet I download music from an artist I want to contribute even more to, but I spend 5 mins on his site to download the music.

For small creators I think this is dumb and almost deceitful. You're not going to make anything from hundreds of micro payments. You aren't an (fairly popular) artist on Spotify earning revenue from millions of streamings.

I have a small site on Patreon that people find useful and earn a little over a hundred USD a month atm, from less than 30 patrons. I don't even have any "perks" atm. I can't imagine earning even 10 $ from something like Flattr, much less Google Ads (but I digress ;)).

Point being for small creators the connection to the audience, and how meaningful their contribution is I think is key. Making micro payments in a way that's invisible to me as a contributor, that's meaningless and I feel no connection to the creator.