I think that if the whole wide internet was based on subscription service, we'd got a awfully monopolistic situation. People only have a limited amount of money to spend on these things (entertainment, news, etc.) - and they want to get most bang for the buck.
So while ads suck, at least they make smaller (and larger) websites viable. You can seamlessly surf around...if every single website had login, you'd probably stick to a LOT fewer websites.
From the consumer side, I think music subscriptions are doing it right. I understand we cannot copy and paste this plan onto other industries, but maybe there are some lessons here.
* You only need one subscription to get access to all of your music content. Video is a mess with providers competing on content.
* There are ad supported networks to view the content, if you do not want to pay.
Unfortunately from the businesses point of view it doesn't work necessarily. Small creators make proportionally much less money than big creators, specially in platforms such as Spotify. Also platforms such as Spotify aren't even profitable (at least not yet) [0].
I would love to see a better internet, but I'm the first to admit I have no idea how to monetize it in less invasive ways that keep it accessible.
So while ads suck, at least they make smaller (and larger) websites viable. You can seamlessly surf around...if every single website had login, you'd probably stick to a LOT fewer websites.