Well, personally I would prefer not needing to pay for information. Advertisements make it so the reader doesn’t have to pay anything while legitimate writers still earn for their work. It empowers the whole world to learn.
The obvious (but riskier ) alternative here is donations. But it’s risky, and sometimes cripples continued operation.
Personally, to combat the SEO spam you mention, I use a non-Google search engine and an adblocker by default while disabling it on sites I like.