But was it taking away the ad revenue, or was it the meteoric rise of valuation and ad-dependency in 1990s without investment into alternative income streams, o

But was it taking away the ad revenue, or was it the meteoric rise of valuation and ad-dependency in 1990s without investment into alternative income streams, only for widespread internet access to nuke the business model? News industry sites are chock full of ads of all kinds, when most people agree they don't want to see them, and they also lead the way in tracking and abusing user data. Maybe the wrong step happened earlier.