There's a difference between first-party ad-blocking and third-party ad-blocking. The latter is where there's a dragnet run by Google, Facebook et al to milk every possible ad-dollar at the cost of gross privacy violations to which most users aren't even privvy to.

Many web properties run first-party ads. Sport blogs and news websites are examples of web properties that show PR-driven ads.

Sponsorship is another viable model as TV has shown. Round the calendar sporting events like the Grand Slams, the NBA, the NFL, the Champions League (to name a few) make ad-money like it's nobody's business.

There's nothing that suggests ad-money would dry up if ever Google and Facebook go down-under tomorrow. And so, I feel, web's demise in the face of more user-control is over exaggerated and a dicotomy that simply doesn't exist except for in the tech circles that have a lot to gain if the status-quo persists, imo.