[erikerikson]

Rumor has it that some people saw the "ads pay for it all" business model and accepted the deal because they wanted the Internet to be sustainable.

[XorNot]

If you don't actually buy anything then you're not sponsoring anything.

In fact generating ad views and not purchasing things from them reduces the value of ads to the website.

[slg]

Your logic is built on the common misconception that the only ad that has any value is the last ad you see before purchase.

[ceejayoz]

I mean, that's a two-sided deal. "You watch ads, you read content". But that deal has been more and more broken by the ad networks and websites; a lot of sites are unnavigable without an adblocker now.

The days of plain text Google AdWords are long, long gone.