When people say they are going to pay for an ad free product they very often underestimate how much the service would cost them. This is often a price higher than what they would be willing to pay.

I respectfully disagree my friend. When Investors , board, wall street is chasing second order and third order delta increase in a stock enshitification is bound to happen. If there is a board that wants return higher than previous year and when you can't optimize costs by improving tech, You find new avenues like showing 2 ads, showing 3 ads. Increasing subscription price or cheekly modifing terms of service and selling your data to 3rd party data brokers. it has nothing to do with subscription cost.