It makes me want to ramp up my efforts to get my friends and family members to install ad blockers, and also makes me even happier about the piholes I gave to several people as gifts the other day.
Comcast and Cox can afford to set up pay-walls and service packages to create content and fill the void. Little guys like me will probably go find a new hobby like camping or brewing craft beer.
The irony is the worst ads actually get the lowest rates; disruptive formats are highly toxic to a brand marketer (why should I put my name on something that pisses the consumer off)... most high end brand players want to get native ad placements or "editorial looking" ad formats. Surfers have learned to ignore people "yelling louder".
Ads are psychological malware, even when they aren't serving actual malware.
> why so negative?
Probably has something to do with the advertising industry doing everything it possibly can to infiltrate every facet of our lives and ruin everything that was ever good about the internet and the web.
I disagree at multiple levels.
While ethically attractive, most people don't pay. This has been proven multiple times across multiple mediums. Look at free-to-play gaming, for example. Worse, go see the badgering and feature locking which goes on as they attempt to extort you into forking over some cash. Is that really the web you want to live in?
From a creator perspective, this sucks even harder. Now I have to manage a bunch of paying customers, many of whom want "support" since I accepted their cash. Some of them even will attempt to bother me in the offline world over any disagreements between their expectations and my own. You would be disturbed by some of the emails I get from patrons of "free sites" - god forbid I should take money from these people and be morally obliged to serve them. My favorite part about being an ad supported publisher is having the moral freedom to tell a jerk to hit the road. Or call the cops if they attempt to contact me offline. I really don't need another boss in my life....
A good ad optimization process can provide a ton of value to the user experience... because keeping users happy is directly related to making more money. Higher bounce rate is lost revenue. Less pages per visit is lost revenue. Slower loads hit you in wallet too (higher bounce rate, shorter time on screen for the advertisement). Oh - and Big Daddy Google turns off your organic search traffic if you deliver a really lousy user experience. Game over.
Now... most of the ads that annoy customers are actually very low paying placements. Those click-bait sites? That wasn't high paying ad space, for either the click which sent you there or the clicks you did while you browsed. Browser redirects? Also cheap, throwaway traffic.
Most websites would be better if they eliminated their lowest advertising placements. The quality usually sucks.
If it has no value, stop accessing it instead of blocking the ads.
The exposure you are talking about is a non-issue, particularly given every site you contact has that same information (even without Ads).
If you are concerned about that level of privacy, you should be using https://tails.boum.org or a no logs VPN.