The users have already responded en masse with the explosive growth of ad and tracker blocking software. We acknowledge the necessity for this move, as the industry has become overrun with parasites. But we also recognize that bloodletting isn't the solution; bleeding the publishers of their revenue isn't the solution.
Brave introduced Brave Payments as a means of supporting content creators. We're staking users with $500k/mo to support their favorite sites. But this isn't a short-term solution while we work on the long-term solution of reforming digital advertising.
With that said, what jonathansampson is proposing mitigates at least one harm of advertising: ubiquitous tracking which violates privacy.
They're trying to replace ads with ads that don't require tracking by third parties.
There's actually a whole area of research on this that's pretty fascinating called privacy preserving advertising.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/serving... https://crypto.stanford.edu/adnostic/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/privad-... https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6234417/
If a website owner changes from an ad supported website to reading ad copy in a podcast, your same criticism would apply.
Yet:
* by changing from ads to ads they get rid of entire classes of bugs: cryptominers, drive-by malware, click-jacking, etc. Perpetuating a capitalist system by requiring users to take undue risks to support my content != perpetuating a capitalist system without making users take those risks.
* by changing from ads to ads, I get rid of an entire class of privacy-invasions for my audience. Perpetuating a capitalist system while making users leak enormous amounts of data to who knows where != an perpetuating a capitalist system without making users do that.
There are probably other points to make. But that's enough to assert that ads != ads in your comment.
Halting.
You're still replacing ads with other ads.