The problems of online DRM / ad ridden websites / etc are all attempts to after the fact monetize information using obsolete IP policy while acting like there is any scarcity to it at all after its made.
A lot of people hear that first paragraph and go on a tirade about getting your brand out, but... that is the same problem, in practice, with either form of funding the creation of information, and is technically its own problem set. You need an audience whether you want people paying you up front to make it at fixed cost or try to use state granted monopolies to extort people for money after the fact.
You are underestimating the search cost problem there [1] I 100% know my company is in a niche market where our revenue can be > $ 50 million/year and where we have some unique offerings BUT the problem is how I can penetrate those companies or how they can found me, not if I can do the job.
So, what you are saying is true but how will the find you? If they try to find you by your skills how do you rank against others on a search engine/app store/etc? Even worst, probably they express the search query in a different domain that the one where you market yourself.
Then, according to the laws of capital dynamics, that content should die out.
Ironically they now have a 30 article a month limit (easily bypassed by switching to private mode in your browser) which actively reduces their ad revenue and messes up their statistics tracking when people switch to private browsing...
In the meantime, Fairfax have been progressively cutting staff. Before it was outsourcing subeditors to New Zealand (and it shows, there are an unbelievable number of unreadable sentences, along with grammar and spelling errors - even in their headlines they show on their main page!) and now they are about to shed more than 100 jobs in actual journalism.
I once subscribed to the SMH, but then the quality got so bad that I just cancelled. They can't even get their comments section right - it's barely usable, and they don't even get threading reasonably correct.
I don't like Ads but possibly there is no general way to monetize content and this is the problem. With lot of freely available value on Internet it is really difficult to convert it to $$$.