Short-term thinking is how hegemonies end.

Revenue is how businesses and even no-profits survive. You can be idealistic about it all you want, but if there is no cash flow, those websites will go away.

Pop-ups working on (to pick a number out of thin air) 0.01% of viewers and alienating 5% to never visit the website again is still incentive to use pop-ups.

Pop-ups working to get money and pop-ups working to alienate users are not mutually exclusive.

Where did you pull those numbers out from?

But ok, if we want to play with made up numbers, pop-ups working with the 0.01% of viewers that are willing to spend money are worth alienating even 10% of people that will never spend a dime.

You are assuming every visitor is the same, when most are just a waste of resources.

They aren't poor. It's similar to what wikipedia does. They have loads of money but make banners making people think they're strapped for cash and about to go offline. It's a scam.