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The total political ad revenue for 2016 was $1.8 billion. It's not that big

> is worth the public backlash

There will be backlash with or without ads. Twitter will also get a lot of blaming for not allowing small parties to have a voice.

Romania recently held presidential elections. Officially all the candidates spent 690.000 euro for online ads. Other countries such as Greece spent ~1 million euro. This article in Romanian details more https://romania.europalibera.org/amp/30285024.html

It’s not about revenue, it’s about being indispensable to politicians and using that as leverage to prevent regulatory actions.

Not really, for instance Facebook is constantly arguing that they want to be regulated in the domain of political ads.