If you're so offended by the ads you're being shown, avoid the content.
Please don't reply with whatever mental gymnastics you use to convince yourself that you've taken the ethical high ground by using an ad blocker.
As for my mental gymnastics, honestly it used to be to hide the terrible ads but these days I just don't care. Get a better business model if the last remaining non-adblocker users don't keep you in business.
YouTubers use Patreon or (the gaming types) are switching to Twitch and their subscription system. Ebooks and online course sites work well for the more instructional content. There's an alternative to everything currently supported by ads. Heck, I imagine a newspaper would do pretty well on Patreon now that I think about it.
Edit: Dug up an example of an ad I installed an adblock to stop. These[1] are the ads that ruined it for everyone, not the bog standard Google ads. Honestly though I'm not going to the effort of checking each site's ad-worthy-ness anymore. All blocked.
A lot of the alternatives to ad models aren't great (e.g. paywalls everywhere) or require a lot more resources to implement (e.g. selling sponsorship opportunities that aren't ads). For some sites, especially smaller publishers, I don't think there is a viable alternative and they will simply cease to exist.
Disclaimer: my company runs a network of ad-supported business news sites
Instead of thinking of it as not having a viable alternative think of it as not having a viable business model. That's on the business, not the user.
If I don't like the prices the grocery store is charging, I don't shrug and walk out with a loaf of bread.
You could say that's not a problem if you already know the site, but most use dynamic ads, so you don't know what you're going to get - you might even get infected (another thing that would get a real store closed).
Finally, most of these stores are connected and tracking which ones you visit and which products you purchase, and you don't have the option of "paying with cash".
Like doctors offices, no?
Emergencies are handled by the national health service, so the price is also clear: it's whatever your tax rate is :)
If bread was free but you have to look at ads for Nutella (Available in aisle 4!) then you'd have a point
The ad world has caused some really shitty optimizations to flare up among sites supported by ads. Optimize for clicks and eyeballs instead of quality.
If the content is so bad why is everyone defending the use of adblockers to see it. Why not just not look?
Furthermore your comment is akin to "if junk food is so bad for you why is everyone eating it and saying it tastes good". It doesn't take much imagination to understand that there's other factors at play.
Crowd-funding models don't necessarily require paywalls. Many creators release their primary content for free.
>selling sponsorship opportunities that aren't ads
How can a sponsorship not be an ad?
>I don't think there is a viable alternative and they will simply cease to exist.
I think if you can't get people to pay for it, it probably wasn't that valuable anyway.