Traffic benefits them in two main ways: directly via ad loads (plus coins and rewards while those were a thing), and indirectly via content added by that traffic. If you block ads and aren't adding content, your traffic just costs them money in compute resources and bandwidth.

Clicks themselves don't generate revenue. Thinking that they are directly translatable to revenue might be why Reddit is in this mess better they saw lots of clicks and wanted to turn them into money but it's not that simple and they fucked up their attempt (well, maybe, time will tell the long term effects of this).