Even the "Plus" articles are still crammed with ads by the publishers, which makes the experience categoricallly worse than just reading on the web with adblockers.
I see so many complaints here about adverts. How much extra would you pay to read news without any adverts? I guarantee that it isn't enough to offset lost revenue from adverts. This is the primary reason why online news has so many adverts.
In the U.K. sky charges its customers a subscription. They have adverts on top of that. Last time I read he financial report adverts accounted for 1/10th of subscription income
I.e instead of paying sky £30 a month and having 1/3rd of content adverts, you could pay £33 a month and have no adverts.
It’s similar with the underground in london. I pay £3 to take a journey and am plastered with adverts. Instead £3.30 and there would be no need for adverts
These companies don’t offer that as free experience though. With sky there are alternates (streaming, or if that falls to the advert curse then pirate bay), with the underground alas no alternatives.
The answers in this thread are essentially all under $1. There seems to be not much rationale behind these numbers besides "it should be cheaper," so the anchor point is probably $0.