Either that, or on-line advertising is not nearly as effective as advertisers think it is, and they are just subsidising the whole shebang while the Facebooks and Googles profit.
As for journalism: yes, that is tricky. Personally, I'm subscribed to one national quality newspaper (NRC in the Netherlands) as my main source of news and research journalism, and just today I've set up an annual subscription for €12 with the Guardian, which I visit occasionally as it is one of the few reliable British sources for news on the whole Brexit ordeal.
Ideally, I would pay a monthly flat fee that I can distribute at the end of each month to participating websites I've visited, but such a system would have to be fair to both the consumers and the publishing websites. If it just ends up a system with yet another FAANG-like Silicon Valley middleman that takes a 30% cut I'm not interested.