[opinali]

One problem with paying individual websites is that you don't really want to create an account, providing your credit card information, to dozens of sites do you? What you suggest works well for heavily used websites (e.g. my daily feed of Ars Technica) but completely fails for stuff you visit every one in a while (e.g. my every-couple-months visits to The Onion). The existing ads infrastructure is almost perfectly suited to solve this problem.

And when you compare this to ad blocking, hopefully you realize that ad blocking is not the most ethical thing to do; you are effectively stealing content. Most ad-supported websites clearly forbid this with TOS wording like: "The copying, reproduction, ..., or other use or change by you, directly or indirectly, of any such Website Content, including but not limited to the removal or alteration of advertising, is strictly prohibited" (Ars). Not all websites are good players either, but if the advertising practices of specific sites are bad then your only ethical choice is to not visit them at all.