Opera used to have opt-in content blocking and I used it for years without any trouble. I only blocked annoying ads on sites that I visit more than once. Of course it meant that I disabled whole ad networks sometimes, but that's entirely their fault. In the end, I was shown many ads while browsing.

That being said, Opera had a proper pop-up blocker and didn't implement every junk feature from javascript (prevent closing windows, change clipboard, ...). Disabling js (on per site basis) was two clicks away as well.

With Chrome, you can't really use it without ad blocker. One bad site and you end up with dozens of new windows, unclosable tabs, ... So the browser itself is yet another reason why people turn to ad blocking.