Most people want things for free. If you asked them if they want free access with ads or paid access without ads I guess most of them would choose the first option.
You're implying here that people can't get things for free without paying in some way and that those ways have to be the two options you present. You're wrong and it's also a logical fallacy.
What are the other options? Surely, none if them is trivially feasible, otherwise we'd see sites using them instead of the current monetization model?
You've moved the goalpost from "there are no other options" to "there might be other options, but they're hard".