Clearly there is a dissonance between the product your consumers want, your content, and the product you're willing to offer them: your content mixed with advertisement. That's an unfortunate situation.
Why does the advertisement make you money in the first place though ?
Someone out there with an actual product or service, want's to sell their product. To increase sales, they pay you an amount of money that they think represents the amount of sale they will generate from the buyers that buy based on the advertisement run on your site. Whether it's through the proxy of some ad network or not.
If I am not willing to buy any products in the first place, I don't have to be factored into the amount the company is willing to pay to advertisers, as it will not increase their sales. If, based on just viewing the advertisement, I still am, that price is slightly inflated.
All what I am doing by blocking ads is bringing that price closer to it's actual value. Now, that's not in your interest as a content producer, but you don't have to be all moralistic about it and try to make me feel bad.
You might argue that that's incorrect, and after viewing enough advertisement I might be persuaded to buy a product that I would not have wanted to by before, but I am not willing to give you that power over my mind for mundane stuff like deodorants and beverages.
- The security implications of the large ad networks (how many malware scares were the result of exploit-laden ads being served on large, popular sites?)
- The privacy implications of same (tracking all the things)
- The large ad networks attitude towards said problems. ("Meh.")
The moment the sites that show these unvetted ads take some responsibility and agree to reimburse me and my company for my time spent dealing with a security breach caused by their shitty practices is the moment I begin considering not blocking ads at the firewall, and not a second before.
They want all the benefit with none of the responsibility. And that responsibility goes well beyond "paste some javascript we gave you in your header".
As long as the transaction is that one-sided, people will continue blocking, and no amount of moralizing is going to change it. Get used to it.
And if I chose not to consume their content, how much money would it save them?
I call it entitlement because you want, and are getting, a free lunch. I call it cognitive dissonance because as an adult with bills to pay you must understand that you are hurting a business by consuming content that costs them money to create and host without paying for it, be it with your time or your money.