About the whole "paying for content" issue. Ads aren't paying for content. You've not been in that situation for a very long time. We don't have ads so that you can have content, we have content so that you can have ads. The entire purpose of an ad-driven website is to serve ads; oh initially ads might have supported content, but now, no. There are massive content farms producing easily-linkable "viral" content specifically for the purpose of ads, very specifically targetting what is popular on FB or whatever the best distribution medium is. The whole thing is a running joke.
So when the ads don't work—and they don't, and it's not ad blockers, and it's mostly imaginary that they ever really did, hence why the payments are tanking and advertisers are getting more desperate—who cares? They never supported anything useful. They actively acted against anything useful. Better for everyone apart from those who have made a business out of it, and tbh fuck them.