It's really easy to forget this. Ads can be a good thing! Anyone ever pick up Computer Shopper magazine in the '90s? It was a giant phonebook full of practically nothing but ads for computer hardware and software. And not only did people voluntarily read it, they paid money for the privilege, because it was useful to them.
Yes that would be good for websites to do, but it also requires a dedicated ad department to organise it all, and consumers of that content that would want to buy the goods that are being sold.
I started building something that would do this, but was never able to generate any interest and gave up eventually. Do you think there is interest outside of us and I should continue that? Where would I find interested parties? Does it already exist?
The thing is, I don't mind ads. The problem is that the people providing content should own and manage what ads they show me. This idea of allocating page space and then bidding it off? It only leads to click fraud, malware, and all sorts of other problems. Instead, write things I find useful, then provide me links -- text links -- to ways I might continue my investigation.
Ads are fine when they help people. When we start focusing on the money instead of the experience, however, it all goes to crap. I don't think ads are something you can outsource if you want to be a quality content provider. They're just as important as any other content on the page.
By the way, this also means that mostly-plain-text pages could work fine for both creators and consumers in the vast majority of cases.