[arnvald]

Unfortunately there's simply no way this is going to happen:

* advertising is profitable for advertisers — they buy ad slots because it brings revenue

* advertising is profitable for publishers — some of the biggest companies in the world (Google, Meta) make most of their revenue from ads

* most people are reluctant to spend money, but they're ok to "spend" their attention and their data

There were multiple attempts with micro-payments and nothing has worked so far. Monthly subscription is preferred by customers and companies, but there are only so many outlets that anyone will subscribe to.

[stared]

Sure, advertising is profitable. Yet, there are various regulations or social norms telling what is available and what is not. For example, we can think of covering a landmark "because it is profitable" - e.g. think of dressing the Statue of Liberty in clothes of a given brand, or covering the Greek Pantheon in free-to-play game ads.

Of course, tastes matter. The US is littered with (in real world) advertising banners, my native Poland - even more. But there are quite a few places in the Europe in which people would consider it off putting to use a glowing sign on a historical or otherwise clean design.

So it is about both tastes and regulations.

> most people are reluctant to spend money, but they're ok to "spend" their attention and their data

This is a tricky part. Kind of miss times when we were buying paper newspapers.

But let's take an example - devs were reluctant to pay $ for services. Not everyone and their dog pays for tokens.