Ads are the least bad option. The Web functions best if content is available without paywalls. The Web is about friction-free use, you click a link, you are faced with walls. If we went to a micro-transaction based Web, where every link was behind a payment service, it would destroy crawlability, hamper sharing, and cast a chilling effect on people's behavior with respect to consuming content.
The people producing content do need to eat and datacenters cost money too. You can either turn the entire Web into a giant App Store Mall where you pay for everything on demand, or we can have a free, open web, where 'curl' works, but you have to suffer the annoyance of banner ads and profiling (which people can do anyway with paywalls anyway)
To me, it's a worthwhile tradeoff. I'd rather not see the Web behind a bazillion freemium pay-me links like we have on native.
The real debate should be over how to make ads less annoying, more relevant, more pleasant, and let those who don't want to make the tradeoff make a micro-payment instead to opt-out of ads.
If I could pay $50/year for an ad-free YouTube experience I probably would.