The delivery of the content is paid by all of us, because the cost of advertising is of course priced into every single purchase we make. The idea that "the internet is free because of ads" (not your point, but the idea is brought up all the time) is wrong - we're not just paying by suffering the ads, we are literally paying with our money for that nonsense.
Yep, which is one reason why I haven't much sympathy for consumers. Another being that I've been on the provider end, and saw consumers pick the "free" ad-driven version of an app over the $1 version. They can't view the ads as being that bad if even $1 is such a steep price they'll tolerate the ads to avoid paying it.
