Ads have nothing to do with democracy; they are forced upon us and serve no other purpose than to manipulate you into buying a product. That's text-book capitalism for you.

Personally, as an open-source developer, I use crowd-funding to cover the expenses for the websites and software I provide. You will find no ads or tracking on my pages, and the same can be said for the majority of open-source projects.

The problem is rarely tied to cost; usually, it's about greed and the never-ending chase for higher profit margins.

Mind you, I'm just a single individual with a single experience, but if I can find a way to get paid for my work without forcing people to watch the visual diarrhea, so can the giants like Google.