Not really. Imagine a restaurant which says, hey, here's this sample, it's free if you watch an ad while you eat. And then you eat, and specifically don't watch

Not really. Imagine a restaurant which says, hey, here's this sample, it's free if you watch an ad while you eat. And then you eat, and specifically don't watch the ad. That's not just smelling the cooking, just like how reading an article is incurs traffic on a website, which the provider has to pay for somehow. Not to mention the procurement of the article.