Yes, I really think that all of this is both more money and more effort than a very high proportion of page-views on the web are valued by the person causing the page-view. I think there are implementation challenges to making a good system for micropayments, but also that solving all of them perfectly still won't get you a healthy micropayments ecosystem, because most of the web browsing that generates ad dollars has a value to the browsing user that is
incredibly low.
In a field of thousands of interchangeably-identical but pretty poppies, would you pay a tenth of a penny to have one more poppy out there? How about a hundredth of a penny? No, it'd be of so little value to you that even a split-second of time spent contemplating the question vastly exceeds its value. The trouble is that most browsing isn't discriminating—acceptable alternatives include almost anything else (as in my Nokia Snake Game example—it's just killing time, and some options might be preferable to others but the difference is extremely tiny).
The only way it could work is if you somehow got almost the entire Web to opt in and start blocking non-micropaying users, such that very little at all was browsable on the Web without going through the trouble of setting this up and it was basically just a second ISP bill. I don't think that's possible unless a full ban on Web advertising were to happen, not just on spying ad-clearinghouses, but also on traditional ads. Then... maybe, but I still wouldn't bet on it working out.
Paid content does work, but it has to aim at addressing the small slice of the audience for whom your content is worth a lot more than a micropayment and getting whole dollars out of them, not pennies or fractions of pennies.
The only place anything like micropayments has kinda worked over a whole medium-category is music. What does that look like?
1) There's a clear legal framework and licensing scheme around music that is broadly adhered-to, and existing, well-established organizations to deal with to get it all sorted out.
2) There's little exclusivity of content, which lets competition at service quality & convenience take center stage and keeps competitors on their toes (very unlike video streaming...)
3) People do care to have access to particular content. They care a lot, when it comes to music, and indeed, many spend much of their time listening to the same songs, albums, and artists over an over. They do not find a random playlist of free music from Soundcloud or whatever to be at all an acceptable replacement, even if it's all in genres they like.
4) ... and yet, this scheme sees constant criticism of not making any notable money for all but the very, very top of the pile. It's not a significant income stream for the vast majority of artists, even those who do make a living at music. Their income still has to be made up elsewhere (remember that "small slice of your audience to whom your work is way more valuable than micropayments"?) And this is the closest thing we have to a working example of micropayments, and it is in fact a functioning micropayment market of sorts. It still, arguably, isn't very good.