I've been wondering if ads never got more intrusive than the simple banners on the side or top of sites if there would've been a huge push to block them. I think most people would figure that, especially on small sites run by people instead of huge corporations, that web hosting isn't free so a banner on a page was a fair tradeoff.

But of course that couldn't be enough for the ad folk who started ramping things up with their flashing ads and pop-ups, eventually culminating in the autoplay video malware hellscape the net has turned into today.