You’re overstating the two options here. The choices might be to pay or see ads, but there is NOTHING requiring them to be “intrusive”. They weren’t intrusive

You’re overstating the two options here. The choices might be to pay or see ads, but there is NOTHING requiring them to be “intrusive”. They weren’t intrusive in printed magazines, and publishers survived. Over-engineered attention-stealing data-hungry tracking ads are something invented in the Internet age, and I see absolutely no reason at all to include any of those features in the other option.