I personally don't mind if web advertising phases out. I have no idea what the alternative is, but web advertising has become a cesspool of privacy invasion and coercive commercial intent that the world is better off without. In this day and age you might imagine that nothing exists in the world but commerce and advertising for that commerce, and without it no one would publish anything. But it's human nature to communicate and share stories and ideas, and if the web advertising industry fell out from under publishers, the web would still exist.
To me the obvious alternative is a return to generally targeted ads as are found on television or in print publications. They are targeted to general audience for the program/publication, and can be served inline with the main content (and therefore not blocked) and require no tracking.
The Internet would become leaner, but I can't see how it would not also become better.
That's assuming these people have other jobs (which will have to somehow be funded by something other than ads or selling data -- bye bye 90% of Silicon Valley.) Having other jobs means they won't be able to spend as much time on it and quality will suffer.
> The good content will be kept afloat by donations.
Donations often don't stretch beyond what's required to do the work that's been done before (people don't often donate once the donation goal has been reached.) This stifles growth.
> The usual corporate content will be written off as "marketing expense".
So companies that derive their value from the content they produce and sell ads on have to write off their entire business model as a "marketing expense". Good idea. Say goodbye to virtually all online publishing that isn't paywalled already.
> The ad-supported worthless crap will disappear. You mean like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, Twitter...?
Three of those provide paid-for tiers. The other two that do not, well...
Optimally.
It plays out optimally.
If everyone suddenly installed and ran an aggressive ad-blocker, we could strangle all of the tracking networks overnight and the Internet would become a noticeably nicer place.
People who refuse to concede that allowing ads is functionally the same thing as inviting third parties to monitor your browsing patterns and invade your privacy are being disingenuous.
How would the horse merchants operate if everyone used cars?
How would window fixers survive if there were no stones being thrown?