But people don't need to realize anything for ads to die. All they need to realize is that they should all be using ad blockers and never ever turning it off again.
Being able to make people look in your direction long enough to show them something else they might spend money on is not valuable. It doesn't need to exist.
The only way you would find new products or services is by 20th century word of mouth or search. And search is built on a mountain of ad dollars.
Are you claiming that you don't need Google?
That isn't true at all. What about when I play a youtube video on my chromecast and it shows an ad on my TV? What happens when websites draw all their content using the canvas instead of the DOM, and adblockers don't work anymore, or websites like Hulu which already make it difficult to enjoy the content while avoiding the ads.
Are these websites the only websites you visit? Otherwise, you're very short on paying for the content you consume.
Without ads, you have to pay the creator of every YouTube video you watch, the journalist behind every news article you read, etc. Unless the content creator is actively choosing to give it to you for free (i.e. never had any ads in the first place), then you need to pay them somehow for every bit of content you consume.
With how we consume content, this will have to be pay-per-view as a day of browsing would otherwise need possibly hundreds of subscriptions.
A mediator in form of Brave's "BAT" or similar is a good way to do fair pay-per-view.
> But people don't need to realize anything for ads to die. All they need to realize is that they should all be using ad blockers and never ever turning it off again.
No, everyone should not use ad blockers, there should be no ads. Ad blockers are a defective symptom of the decease that is ads, not a solution to the problem.
> Being able to make people look in your direction long enough to show them something else they might spend money on is not valuable. It doesn't need to exist.
It's important to remember that we're only fighting random ads plastered everywhere as brute-force marketing.
Other forms of marketing will always exist. Having a big logo on your physical store is marketing, done to attract attention of possible customers. Showcasing their products within the store is marketing to try to make you buy them. Nothing wrong with that.
I'm sure you're not just expecting content creators to make stuff for you full-time entirely for free.
Ads should die, but it requires consumers to realize that they need to pay for content one way or another.