Specific numbers aside, one possible reason is they want to increase adoption to gain user volume, in order to have an effect on the larger ecosystem.
Once you have non-trivial network effects, you could continue to influence the ecosystem (see: MSIE, Firefox in its early days, and Google Chrome). There are probably multiple paths to this. This is one.
I think we need to rethink the whole "advertising as a way to support creators" model. Support comes in many forms, and decoupling knowledge of a thing from being paid for good work would likely result in higher quality outcomes.
It's possible there's something to the Nostr model (https://nostr.com/) that could be of use here. A key part of Nostr is the "zap" system. In addition to allowing users to just merely upvote posts, users can also choose to zap a post, which is just a method of sending Bitcoin to the poster's wallet.
Think of it like a tip system, as it directly and concretely rewards users for good content, by exchanging a token of direct value (money).
With a system like this, advertising is something you do to get recognized, while the zaps are something you receive as a reward for valuable work (by whatever metric your audience appreciates).
In this example, assuming sequential steps, if step 2 must be performed before step 4, then it is step 2 which is the bottleneck.
After step 2 has been optimized, step 4 becomes the new bottleneck—assuming that optimization of step 2 is satisfactory.
While both steps 2 and 4 contribute to a slow system, a bottleneck means something else entirely: it is the single most significant point of slow down for the rest of the process.
To put it another way, it’s hindering the overall execution. If both use the same amount of time, then whichever is closer to the front of the process is by definition hindering more of the process.
It's not necessarily an either-or situation. It can be privacy, annoyance, and a general lack of effectiveness.
Advertising isn't just the art of selling a product, it's the art of getting past our normal social defense that someone is trying to take our money, our attention, and our time. Advertising is necessarily adversarial, and everyone's tolerance for it is going to be unique depending on how heavily they rely on free resources, but it is a necessary unpleasantry at its best.
If I could even recall the exact number of times an advertisement of any type appealed to me in the last 20 or more years, it would amount to less than the fingers on my hand. I used to welcome all of Google's advertising tracking and relevance-seeking as the best version of advertising out there, but even that resulted in unimpressive and less than meaningful ads. If Google can't advertise something useful to me, then I have zero qualms about walking by, palm facing them in refusal.
Because of these product failures, and because it is unwise to trust a big company with all of your personal data, I rarely desired to be advertised to at all.
Individual content creators have the opportunity to give me a chance with something unique that they know that their viewers would be interested in because they (hopefully) relate to their audience much more than a faceless corporation, and can present a product in its best, most relevant light.
But if that content creator is trying to sell me a Scandinavian VPN service or a game of legendary shadows, you can bet I have zero interest.
All this may change as GenAI-driven methods may key in on relevant interests based on what I wish to share about myself. I'm hoping that Apple's Intelligence systems will end up preserving privacy as well as driving a more effective ad model.
Unrelated to the article itself, but is it possible for this website to have worse ads on mobile?
It starts automatically playing with music, and if I pause it to stop the music/sound then scroll down it pops up again as a floating ad and starts playing again. If I hit the pause and X to close the floating ad, it starts playing yet again in the original inline place it was in the webpage, making me have to scroll back up to silence it again.
Once you have non-trivial network effects, you could continue to influence the ecosystem (see: MSIE, Firefox in its early days, and Google Chrome). There are probably multiple paths to this. This is one.