Selling advertorial content tends to be what needs to happen when users piss and moan about adverts, refuse to click on them, or use ad blockers to stop them completely. Gotta make money somehow
I have no issue with adverts supporting websites in principle as I recognise that servers and bandwidth cost money, however the advertisers and advertising networks take the p1ss.
Ever sat there on a slow-marginal connection while a page slowly spooled up the big showy ads before even thinking about giving you the content you wanted? Never had driveby redirects to annoying/dubious/unsafe sites while you were reading something because the ad network is, shall we say, unprincipled? How about the popunders rendering animated ads for gambling you finally discover when closing your browser after wondering why something was a tad unresponsive? Let’s not even go near the need for internet security software to deal with the various attacks perpetrated by malicious code hidden in adverts and the damage they can cause.
Personally, if a site becomes too annoying, I don’t bother blocking ads, I just don’t go there anymore.
If the advertisers play nicely, people might interact or at least not actively block them. However, we are where we are, and that’s it til the next thing comes along. I’m glad some people still publish nice magazines! 🙂