Exactly. Ads suck, but paywalls around every single thing on the Internet would suck more. Plus you can usually block ads, but not paywalls. Even if you couldn't ever block ads, they'd still be preferable to the universal paywall scenario.

But some kinds of companies should definitely look more into accepting donations and offering premium options in exchange for ad-free viewing plus extra features. I'm paying for YouTube Premium to avoid seeing ads (and they have like one premium show that's pretty good), and I think that's a pretty good deal.