For children, or the unemployed, the marginal utility of a dollar is quite high, but free time is cheap.
Likewise, the unauthenticated, un-paid-for Web has permitted frictionless composition and repurpose of content without the need to 'do deals'. Beyond just the consumer issue, a non-Ad supported web would have severely limited its evolution, by forcing content to require authentication.
Yes, but...
> Beyond just the consumer issue, a non-Ad supported web would have severely limited its evolution, by forcing content to require authentication.
Having no ads would have eliminated one of the several means of funding content that doesn't require authentication -- but ads aren't the only mechanism that doesn't require authentication -- and, yes, any limitation in available models would have limited the ways in which the web could evolve, by changing the opportunity space.
> I don't really want the Web to turn into a giant Apple Store, where every link, I must face the cognitive burden of paying for it before I know that I even want it.
Life is that way: even with "free with ads" content, you are accepting a cost for the content before you can be certain that the benefit justifies it. (Heck, there's an opportunity cost even with "free without ads" content.)
If you just mean the friction of active choice with each click, well, even in a payment model you could create a system with configurable passive thresholds and lumped periodic payments where the cognitive burden of an active purchase decision was avoided for people who preferred to do so.