Print ads are a lot less obtrusive for me compared to digital ads. It's literally just a piece of paper that I don't have to look at. They don't have inline ads, or sponsored content, or autoplaying videos, or any of the conventional web shenanigans that try to hijack your attention. They certainly can't track me. I can't speak to the digital side of the economist, as I do not use it, but the print ads are mostly for dumb luxury goods that I can easily ignore.

People paid for newspapers for decades, and they've definitely always had ads in them. The advertisers subsidize my news reading, and in this case at least the trade-off seems acceptable.