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The concern of users becoming the product when using an ad-based business model was discussed in a 1995 paper presented at the Third International World-Wide Web conference:

"The design of a medium strongly affects the revenue model that is applied to that medium. Entrepreneurs will seek an appropriate way of creating a revenue constrained and encouraged by the media technology. One example of this relationship can be discovered through examining the different variations of the television medium. The traditional technology of broadcast made it difficult for content creators to charge individual viewers for selecting a program. This lead to revenue sought via advertising, based on making the viewers the product rather than the customers, and resulted in bland programming in an attempt to get as large an audience as possible to sell to advertisers. The technology of cable television and scrambling made it easier to charge for subscription or pay-per-view, causing more directed programming towards smaller audiences. [...] The revenue model has implications for what content will be made available on a medium as well as the quality of that content. Web technology designers can strongly impact which revenue models will be used on the web. Creating alternative revenue models is important to avoid the application of potentially harmful revenue models due to a lack of alternatives."

https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-7552(95)00039-A