Online Adverts are a form of micropayment. It's currently the only way to charge sub-cent amounts from users. It requires the third party of an advertiser, which is a very expensive middle man.
If we can figure out how to do micropayments without users needing an account somewhere (like PayPal), we can get rid of ads. That is the ultimate solution to this long-winding conflict between users, advertisers and content creators.
> how to do micropayments without users needing an account somewhere
That doesn't seem possible. What does even a hand-wavy sketch of this look like to you? I'd guess it's possible without, e.g. a unique row in a single (tho perhaps distributed) database table for each user, but I can't imagine it really being different than an 'account' either, e.g. a Bitcoin 'wallet'.
If we can figure out how to do micropayments without users needing an account somewhere (like PayPal), we can get rid of ads. That is the ultimate solution to this long-winding conflict between users, advertisers and content creators.