It could be microtransactions/in-app purchases-as-a-microtransaction, it could be subscription based models, it could be "media flat rates" (cross publication subscriptions), or something else entirely.
A lot of content, especially newspaper/magazine articles, at least here in Germany, already are paid-only, either through subscriptions or both subscriptions and alternatively microtransactions (mostly more in-depth reporting). The UK Guardian and the German taz employ voluntary payments/subscriptions with some success last I heard. US media seems to be pushing a lot more for subscriptions now ("you got free 3 articles this month")
Creators on patreon and on OnlyFans (NSFW) seem to be making good money off of subscriptions, on a smaller scale (and if they sell a product that has some demand, of course).
Relatedly the greater independence of creators from advertising would in turn mean fewer ads, which in turn means potentially more competition for the available ad space again and thus potentially higher prices.
Microtransactions are difficult legally, due to taxes.
If someone in state/country X buys something from a site in state/country Y, both X and Y may levy taxes on that transaction.
Many have thresholds for small businesses, where you don't have to collect taxes if your total business volume is below some threshold. For US states, the threshold is often of the form "more than $T total sales OR more than N sales".
With microtransactions, it is easy to exceed N sales even though you are not actually collecting much money, and then the costs of preparing and filing your quarterly sales tax reports can exceed your revenue.
Advertiser supported sites don't suffer from this problem. If someone in X visits a site in Y and Y gets payed by an advertiser for showing an ad to that person, the site does not have to worry about taxes in X, and in Y the ad revenue will just be income that gets dealt with on their income taxes.
Until we can get microtransaction-friendly cross jurisdiction sales tax reform microtransactions are going to have limited viability, at least for sites that want to operate legally.
But there there are people that intentionally bypass paywalls. Almost every article posted on HN behind a paywall has a user “neonate” who posts a paywall circumventing link. Then we collectively complain about advertising and paywalls. There is a large number of people that seem to think that all content should be free and that the people creating it are somehow a charity. I am ok with paywalls, but I don’t like to subsidize free riders. Apple News+ as a concept is a pretty good one, hopefully we can see more innovation in that sort of model.
I pay for a few paid news but I'm not fine with paywalls. It blocks non-subscriber's access, that's the problem. Obviously no one can subscribe all subscriptions, a few is max for most people. Ads is far better in this time. I wish Apple News' approach is getting popular.
Advertisers would put stupid banners on my page because they cannot do anything else but still want to advertise. Maybe they spend less because they get less return. I actually think it would increase quality of content.
Most content I consume is, like your comment, already shared by users without them receiving any compensation for it. It is usually someone who is not the content creator that profits from content on the internet.
A lot of content, especially newspaper/magazine articles, at least here in Germany, already are paid-only, either through subscriptions or both subscriptions and alternatively microtransactions (mostly more in-depth reporting). The UK Guardian and the German taz employ voluntary payments/subscriptions with some success last I heard. US media seems to be pushing a lot more for subscriptions now ("you got free 3 articles this month")
Creators on patreon and on OnlyFans (NSFW) seem to be making good money off of subscriptions, on a smaller scale (and if they sell a product that has some demand, of course).
Relatedly the greater independence of creators from advertising would in turn mean fewer ads, which in turn means potentially more competition for the available ad space again and thus potentially higher prices.