My theory is that, collectively, our privacy and attention is worth far more to other people that to us. Making up numbers, a company may pay $1 to show a targeted ad to you while you are reading an article. But there is no way that you'd ever pay $1 to read that article. And, furthermore, you probably see viewing that ad as a minor annoyance, not $1 worth of value.

I think if most folks had to replace ad money out of their own pocket in order to consume the content they like, they'd never do it.

They sure do. But seeing the majority out there does want to see ads or doesn't care about seing them, it's not like they won't get paid at all. And indeed that majority won't pay for content but there are others who do, and it's not impossible to make a living out of it: there are proper independent online-only news channels out there with no ads and paid by their subscribers (plus a bunch of government subsidies usually).

just like a la carte TV, I think we'd find out that is much more expensive than we know.

Assuming you mean Netflix and the likes: that is actually way cheaper now than what 'a la carte' used to be for me. 20 years ago when I wanted to choose what I looked at on a screen, I'd be looking at DVD rental because there wasn't much of an alternative here. Or maybe even not an alternative at all, don't remember exactly, but there was just cable TV and apart from standard channels you could get some extra (a porn channel, a sports channel), but that's still not 'a la carte'. Anyway: I easily paid twice what Netflix costs me now per month, every week.

I think they literally mean a la carte TV, like paying for the Showtime package, the sports package, the premium sports package, etc. on top of your subscription, or paying to watch a movie on Prime