this talking point just doesn't die, and that's not how economics or profit maximising agencies work. It also fails to explain why, over time, advertising encroached on almost all platforms unless actively resisted and why it's so difficult to find a genuinely ad free service.

in short, these platforms work to maximise profit. ads serve to form another income stream, and as long as they don't push sufficient numbers of customers away, it's always in the short term interest of the provider to expand advertising income until the marginal gain equals the marginal loss in marginal revenue from the consumer base.

In most mediums and content/ subject matters, this is at a non-zero level of advertising, especially if everyone else is already advertising.

while advertising does really result in free services (if you do not account for negatives of advertising or assume all increases in consumption generate positive utility), it is not generally the case for most consumers that advertising results in cheaper products, or that you could pay 5% more and be rid of ads.