It might be one of those things that are extremely painful at first, but becomes better when things have settled down.

All that sites that have turned to clickbait and scammy ads, wouldn't we be better of without them? If the ad market where to collapse the real newspapers, who still have actual subscribers would still be around, things like the BBC and other local and tax/license funded media would still be around and assuming that the free market is actually a thing, companies would emerge to plug the holes left be the clickbait sites, at a price.

As it stands we're seeing those with the means paying for actual content and everyone else is just getting absolute garbage.

msn.com is my favorite example, why is that still around? Most of the ads are actual scams, all article link to other sites, which are equally scammy. Why? Because it makes Microsoft money and they do not care about their users getting scammed, as long as they get their cut.

I don't think ads should be the main way we fund content online, it's clearly not working anymore. The ad space has become the product and whatever content remains is just enough to trick people to going to the site and clicking a link or two. The content is no longer about enlightening or even entertaining, it's about trapping people in some twisted hedonic treadmill.