Advertisement just should not be the central means of income of content producers. I really hope this point of view gets killed together with advertisement.
Ads are placed via an automatic auction upon pageview. GM and Ford both want to show me an ad when I google "what car to buy", and have automatic systems that decide how much they'd be willing to pay to show me that ad based on my likelihood of purchase (income, sex, location, etc). Why not have a system that follows me around and outbids them using funds from my bank account, to show me an ad which is just a transparent image? That way I don't have to see ads but content creators still get what they need?
The first version worked exactly as you proposed. The UX however was meh. You'd place a monthly limit on your ad (outbidding) spend (eg. $2) and it ended up outbidding only some of the ads: those served by Google which were also outbid by your amount.
So from a user's perspective it didn't fully work. Also the ad space wasn't fully removed (perhaps due to technical reasons) but was replaced with a blank image. It also didn't catch on much.
So they tried to pivot and now the program works with certain cooperating websites to fully get rid of all ads but I'm sure bigger websites would rather be in total control of monetizing themselves and can spend on the necessary IT infra. similar to most online newspapers these days.
I think an advertiser (eg. a legal firm) might be willing to pay eg. $10 per ad impression but no user is willing to outbid it so I think the first model (outbid in the auction) is more sustainable and profitable for both parties but needs to have all ad exchanges on board.
So in short, it's been tried but wasn't an instant (or even a slow) success and idk whether Google will continue investing in it or not.
Google makes around 30 billion/quarter on ads. Assuming most of that comes from 200 million users (they have more than that but I assume a lot are not worth very much to advertisers), and their ad revenue comes from a 50% cut of the total ad payments, that comes out to around $300/quarter or $75 a month. I'd pay it, but I think most wouldn't.
Certain % of your internet bill goes to helping pay to host the sites you are visiting every billing period. If a site is large enough hosting would be sustained by the visiting userbase rather than the site owner. If a site is too small for that, chances are hosting has been cheap anyway.
Subscription. It is only viable for content that well off people use a lot of though, even then only when you are much better than the free competition.
