It's more complex than that, I'm afraid. People don't create content or innovate for free. I'm sure there are a rare few who do, but most people hope for the promise of a financial incentive. Having a financial incentive to innovate or create content is a good thing and life without ads would have a butterfly like effect on that innovation. I highly doubt the internet would resemble anything like it does today if ads didn't exist (people take for granted it would look exactly the same as it does now). Nope, without ads, I doubt the internet would have evolved much beyond 1997. And I remember the internet back in 1997. There was some neat things going on, not many ads, but practically zero content compared to today.
Without ads to subsidize content, most of your favorite TV shows wouldn't exist, most of your favorite websites wouldn't exist (think google.com, youtube.com, etc)... After all, google.com doesn't make much if anything off their search engine, 97% of their revenue comes from their advertising department.