Your point may be valid, but the NYT is a poor example of paywalls as an alternative to intrusive ads. I'm a paying subscriber to the NYT. When I open their ho

Your point may be valid, but the NYT is a poor example of paywalls as an alternative to intrusive ads. I'm a paying subscriber to the NYT. When I open their homepage now, the page is split horizontally with an ad taking up about 40%-50% of the entire screen. The "The New York Times" header is about halfway down the page, and the first actual content probably starts at 85% or even below that. Anecdotally, the NYT runs even more intrusive ads than this to paid subscribers. Off the top of my head, I would say their modal popup video ad is the worst.