I mean, while that sounds like it makes things more expensive, I’m not entirely sure that it does, given that:

It doesn’t really make sense to run ads unless the average person watching the ad will ultimately buy enough that they wouldn’t otherwise from the company the ad is for that the extra profit exceeds the ad cost, thus still making watching ads have a cost that just isnt visible

Or, ads might be run to simply get people to switch what product in a category they buy without increasing the amount, in which case, they become a required cost to stay competitive, and because suppliers must now all pay that extra cost, the cost to buy products in that category must be increased, again making the ads cost the viewer in a non-visible way

Or, we could be seeing things like political ads that dont ask one to buy things, just support a politician or policy. However even here, the policies most likely to get ad spending are those most beneficial to people that already have money (since they’re the ones that can most easily afford to run ads) and in general, benefiting those people means giving them a bigger share of the economies wealth, which means the average person has a smaller share when the ads are effective, again costing the viewer in an roundabout way.

If people are going to end up paying for the use of these things in some way anyway, doing it directly seems more honest to me.

When I was a kid: basic printer paper. Drawing is probably part of the intended usecase for a sheet of paper, but I’d also do a bunch of origami and use it to try to make models of airplanes