You could definitely be right that it's too niche of a tier to make sense. I can just see the logic (on paper) that surveillance is the worst part of advertising.

I used to pay for physical newspapers and magazines that had ads in them, without complaining. It was a simpler time. But then internet content was free for so long and Google etc. abused us for so long that I can't feel good about paying for a news web site at all now. Even if it was ad free I don't trust my traffic isn't being sold in at least some obfuscated way.