I will tell this nonstop, online advertisement (as a form of monetization) is pretty damn dated nowadays. You could give them literally a dollar every year and they would make more from you than serving you ads.
Unpopular opinion: I kinda feel like a reason ads are so popular nowadays is because it gives the user a way of feeling they are supporting a product/creator by doing pretty much nothing.
I think pitching in a dollar every year is preferable. Heck, I even pay much more to Youtube to get rid of advertisements. But it does pose a significant threshold for new users.
A hybrid model doesn’t sound too bad to me, where you can pay for an ad free server.
They are popular, because it’s a way to squeeze out extra money out of the users (often in addition to paying for the product) and since the software is proprietary the users often can’t do anything about it.
Btw notice how most youtubers turned into salesmen that want to sell you something in each video and their sponsored segments are often minutes long.
