I think you're missing the point. He's clearly not against advertising per se, nor against free content; rather, he's against online tracking.
> "They stole the internet from us", he says of advertisers. “The internet is supposed to be open and free, and you shouldn’t be afraid of being monitored.
> he believes the current state of advertising is less profitable for sites now than it was before widespread tracking was in place.
> He mentions "normal ads," which you may see in a magazine or on TV, were the standard for about a decade, even on the internet. "A lot of sites were more profitable, and people were less worried about having to block ads. The ads were normal, it was kind of like what you were seeing if you were going and reading a magazine. There were ads, but they weren’t following you."
Advertising has existed for as long as business has existed. But for most of business history, advertisers could not track you. A magazine or a billboard can't track you or personally identify you.
Local radio stations can advertise local businesses which could be an example of good/useful targeted ad. The difference is of course the targetting is "passive" and they don't know me, at a downside of being only able to estimate the number of listeners. I'd welcome some passive system like that on the internet but have no idea how it could work.
Sites were profitable because the average person couldn't create a site easily, so they had little competition.
This very site exists because the creator got a gob smacking fortune for a web store, something that you can literally create by a following textbook today.
> "They stole the internet from us", he says of advertisers. “The internet is supposed to be open and free, and you shouldn’t be afraid of being monitored.
> he believes the current state of advertising is less profitable for sites now than it was before widespread tracking was in place.
> He mentions "normal ads," which you may see in a magazine or on TV, were the standard for about a decade, even on the internet. "A lot of sites were more profitable, and people were less worried about having to block ads. The ads were normal, it was kind of like what you were seeing if you were going and reading a magazine. There were ads, but they weren’t following you."
Advertising has existed for as long as business has existed. But for most of business history, advertisers could not track you. A magazine or a billboard can't track you or personally identify you.