I don't disagree and the "micro-payments" might be one approach. I honestly don't know what would work, I just know I don't like ads. One idea I saw above was for a subscription model. I'd be down with that if the price is right. My preference would really be for something that is "free at the point of use."
I would be happy with a system where one gives Apple a small block of money (say $5-$10, that you refill as the need arises), and then they dole out micropayments to sites that have their content in Apple's News app, as you read articles. Maybe with a "the following article will cost 1 cent" dialog in front of the articles, and a facility for whitelisting sites you've pre-approved so they automatically deduct without the prompt.
(Google seems to have something similar already - more like a pay-for-content wallet that websites can make use of - but I'm not keen on further increasing the amount of Google tracking of me. Apple I trust more for this kind of thing - they've made clear by their actions that their model is, "we charge a lot up front for things rather than selling
you".)
And if your site's content (inside the News app) wants the micro-payment and then delivers the kind of content frequently seen under click-baity headlines (little or no new info, poorly written, mostly quotes from / links to the content of other sites), then I'll probably drop that site. Hmm, maybe a way to blacklist such sites, so they no longer show up in your feed - maybe if a site gets blacklisted by a high enough percentage of people who have read its articles, Apple could look at the site to see if it really is
super click-baity, and if so, stop showing it to people who haven't specifically requested that site - done as, or at least including, a manual step in order to keep people from running DoS campaigns against sources they simply don't like - and no refund for the micro-transaction (after all, it was a penny or thereabouts, maybe a nickel or dime), to avoid people just reading every article they want and then getting refunds.
But this could be a frictionless way to read good quality ad-free content, with the authors/sites getting reimbursed - and it would tend towards rewarding authors/sites for producing good quality content*. I'd pay for that.
*: (rather than going the poor-article-divided-onto-seven-pages-with-clickbait-headline-and-lots-of-ads route)
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Not an Apple news fans... but I think there's a little too much advertising since iAd1 - some sites are ruined by videos, full screen ads, fake close boxes that open up new windows, etc, etc... Web browsing on an iPad was once a joy, now it really stinks. can't wait for iAd2 to force me back to a laptop.
Apple's iAd service shut down over a year ago. The ads you're complaining about on your iPad aren't from iAd. And, Apple added a Content Blocker feature into Safari on iOS quite some time ago. You can install and run a variety of third-party content blockers through this mechanism, some of which will block all those ads. You have the power to make web browsing on your iPad a joy again.
