Indeed. A paradox inherent to the notion of paying to avoid ads is that it identifies you as someone who has disposable income and is willing to spend it, i.e. someone who advertisers really want to target.
Ad money isn't innocuous. It's about control, because if the recipient were to do something an advertiser doesn't like, they pull the money... for example strong privacy/anti-advertising technologies. This desire to please the interests of large corporations leads to large scale conformity.
But having absolutely no ads might not be ideal (or realistic).
A model where a site shows you a notice asking to opt in for personalised ads (otherwise show generic ads anyway) would be fine. But this means no site, no third party service should be allowed to track the user or collect data unless opted in.
Essentially, as opposed to profiling the user, profile the content. And give content creators more control over the user experience to discourage sleazy ads and encourage ads creators actually want on their site.
There's some optimism wrapped into this, so I look forward to someone popping my optimism bubble.
Within capitalism, some regulations can make it slightly less invasive but the imperatives of the system will over time break down those regulations.
Users requested an ad-free paid membership, but when we ran the numbers, we found that those people willing to pay made the site much more in advertising than a reasonable subscription could.
However a while after I left they launched the service, so maybe they’ve managed to make it worthwhile.