People seem to think they exist in a vacuum. But now everyone is using ad blockers, and the dynamics have devolved to resemble the Greek tax system: "I'm not paying those taxes, they are too high" -> "We're not getting enough revenue, need to lower costs" -> "Why should I pay for the shitty service the government provides?" -> "We need to raise taxes, or close the schools" ->...
Stuff that would help:
– Publishers need to get their act together and offer netflix/spotify-style access
– Adtech needs a quality revolution
– Ad blockers need to evolve to do "smart blocking", where the tuple of (user/publisher/article/ad network/ad client/network condition) determines if an ad should be blocked, with a build-in mechanism to reward both quality content (by being more forgiving in the other dimensions) and quality ads (in terms of technology/security/interest to the user/intrusiveness)
– Users need to welcome such experiments with a modicum of goodwill and good faith, and a renewed willingness to differentiate. Right now, journalists cry themselves to sleep because even if you're just doing the crosswords at a French magazine, someone will try to stab you with your own pencil, yelling something about "Iraq" and "WMDs".