This is a really great perspective. My background is in the print publishing world...going back to the late 90s. What I realize is that we keep going back to that world for guidance on what the future of the web will hold (in terms of content publishing). The first place I saw this was in design. In the wild west of the early net (prior to about 10 years ago), there was really not much rhyme or reason to how websites were designed. Then people like Khoi Vinh started advocating for grid structure in web design...bringing a concept that was well developed in the print world.
Today, we seem to be fighting for this false binary of either a web with ads or one without. What the old world of print might teach us is the importance of quality, limited, relevant advertising. When done well, people are not only OK with advertising, they embrace and look forward to it. Magazines were best at this...but they've gone down the path of devaluing their ads by moving towards more and more paid content (advertorials) and by overwhelming the content with the quantity of ads.
I think in the end, publishers will have no choice but to see what you see or else perish.
I have the copy of Newsweek that run only Macintosh ads back in 1984. I bought it on eBay just for the ads, certainly not for the feature about Ronald Reagan!
Today, we seem to be fighting for this false binary of either a web with ads or one without. What the old world of print might teach us is the importance of quality, limited, relevant advertising. When done well, people are not only OK with advertising, they embrace and look forward to it. Magazines were best at this...but they've gone down the path of devaluing their ads by moving towards more and more paid content (advertorials) and by overwhelming the content with the quantity of ads.
I think in the end, publishers will have no choice but to see what you see or else perish.