I hate ads. With the fire of a million suns. And I think I hate them more than most people do, because I’m completely self-aware that I’m pretty easily influenced by them. Sure adblockers are great, and I run Pihole and I do everything I can, but these days, with so many different types of services, on so many different types of interfaces (I watch all streaming services on an AppleTV, for example), that doesn’t cut it. So I pay for the ad-free version of everything that I actively consume.
And it saves me money, or at least probably breaks even. Because I’m well aware I’d end up buying a couple of things from those ads at some point.
Ads suck in every possible way. But they also suck in the way they are designed to suck, to take advantage of people and convince them to buy something they don’t actually need. They call that “marketing” but I call it psychological manipulation, and I’m opting out by paying a premium where I have to. It’s the best of a bad situation.