Can We Talk About Ads in 2026
Where TF are we heading?
A couple of years ago, there used to be a deal everyone understood it.
You get the product for free. In return, you see ads.
The ads pay for the thing you’re using. You don’t pay money. You pay attention. And, increasingly, you pay with your data.
That was the deal for a long time. Search engines, social media, YouTube, email, news sites. Free. Ad-supported. You could opt out by paying for a premium version. No ads, no tracking, just the product.
It was annoying sometimes. But it was kind of fair. You always had a choice.
The old model
For most of the internet I remember, ads were the price of free. And people were willing to accept them.
Google Search was free because advertisers paid to be in the results. Gmail was free because Google scanned your emails (they stopped, supposedly) and showed you targeted ads. Facebook was free because your data was the product.
Everyone knew this. “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.” That line got repeated so much it became a cliché.
But it was kind of accurate, right?
And there was always a paid alternative. Spotify Free had ads, Spotify Premium didn’t. YouTube had ads, YouTube Premium removed them. Netflix was ad-free by default, because you paid anyway.
That was literally the pitch. Pay us, skip the ads. Two lanes. Pick one.
Then it changed
Somewhere in the last two years, the lanes somehow merged. And worse…
It started with streaming, I think. Netflix introduced an ad-supported tier. “Cheaper” option, ads included. A new lane, not a replacement.
But then the existing paid tiers started getting ads too. Amazon Prime Video added ads to its standard plan. You were already paying. The ads showed up anyway. If you wanted them gone, you had to pay even more. An extra $3.99 per month on top of your existing subscription.
Disney+ did the same thing. Hulu did the same thing. Peacock did the same thing.
The pattern: introduce ads on the paid tier, then offer an even more expensive tier to remove them.
The “no ads” experience that used to be the default became the premium+ upsell.
YouTube’s version
YouTube has been pushing ads harder every year.
More ads before videos. More ads during videos. Ads on channels that aren’t even monetized, where the creator sees nothing from it.
Then came Premium Lite. A cheaper subscription that still shows some ads. You pay, and you still see ads. Just fewer of them.
We’re now paying for the privilege of seeing fewer ads. Not zero. Fewer.
Microsoft’s version
This one is probably the wildest. And I don’t understand for the life of me why people are still using Windows.
You buy a Windows laptop. A new one. It costs real money. Hundreds, more likely over a thousand dollars. You open it, set it up, and Windows shows you ads. In the Start menu. In the Settings app. In the lock screen. In notifications.
Ads in the freaking paid operating system of a trillion-dollar company.
Ads for Microsoft products, ads for third-party software, “suggestions” that are just ads with a different name. Inside an operating system you paid for, on hardware you paid for.
There’s no premium tier of Windows that removes this. There’s no “Windows without ads for $20 more.” You just get ads. On your own computer. That you bought.
That’s just disrespectful.
The tracking never stopped
The original deal was: you get tracked, you see targeted ads, you don’t pay. Trading privacy for free stuff.
Now you pay AND you get tracked.
The subscriptions didn’t replace the surveillance. They added a revenue stream on top of it. Netflix’s ad tier tracks viewing behavior for ad targeting. Amazon tracks your shopping, your streaming, your Alexa usage, your everything. Google knows what you search, what you watch, what you email about, where you go.
Paying didn’t buy you privacy. It just bought you the same product with a receipt.
Where this is heading
I think we’re heading toward a world where ad-free is the exception.
Where every surface is monetized. Where “no ads” becomes a luxury feature reserved for the most expensive tier of everything.
Cars show ads on their dashboards. Smart TVs show ads on their home screens before you even open an app. Fridges with screens show ads. Gym equipment shows ads.
The logic is always the same: we have a screen, screens can show ads, ads make money, therefore ads.
Nobody asks whether the person already paid for the thing with the screen on it.
OR… we’re heading towards free, open-source privacy explosion where these big companies running ads will lose users in masses.
Let’s hope for number 2.
The few who don’t
Apple doesn’t show ads in macOS or iOS. Not yet, anyway. (They do show them in the App Store and News, but the operating system itself is still clean.)
That’s becoming a selling point in itself, in my view. Again, why would anyone use Windows 2026. Go Mac or go Linux.
Substack doesn’t show ads. Medium doesn’t show ads. Yet.
They use subscriptions to fund the platform. The subscription model can feel exhausting when everything wants $10 a month, but at least you know what you’re getting. Money for product. No ads. No tracking. (I hope).
That model is getting rarer. And it’s worth protecting.
Downsides of complaining about this
Of course, there is a counterargument.
Content costs money. Servers cost money. Development costs money. Ads help keep prices lower for everyone. Without the ad revenue, your $10 streaming subscription would be $25.
Maybe… I don’t know.
But that argument worked when ads were the alternative to paying. Not when they’re the addition to paying. The price didn’t go down. It went up. And the ads showed up too.
Also, many of these companies are posting record profits. Amazon, Google, Microsoft. They’re not adding ads because they’re struggling.
They’re adding ads because they can.
The Bottom Line
The deal was simple. Free with ads, or paid without. Pick one.
That deal is gone. Now it’s paid with ads, or paid more without ads. And in some cases, like Windows, it’s just paid with ads and no way out. WTF.
I don’t think this is going to reverse. The companies that started doing this are making too much money from it.
We’ll see where this goes. Probably nowhere good.