It's no secret that selling online ad space generates little to no profit. I have struggled to find a credible source but it's generally known that 1 ad on YouTube makes the creator ~$0.002 and 1 spotify stream makes its creator ~$0.003 per stream. For the biggest of creators, the Mr. Beast’s the Taylor Swifts, and the PewDiePie’s this can be a lot of money, but for the average or even the above average creator, it's a pittance. When a company has a service that is free with ads, the ads are not there to make money they exist to convince users to pay for the privilege of not being advertised to. The ads afford annoyance to the users, which is perfect for advertising a way to remove ads. If your not paying, then you're the product back