Exactly. Ad blocking can only defeat itself, never win. It will either become useless, because of technological measures that counter it, or because all ad-supported sites will go out of business or switch to a subscription model. In either case ad blocking will become pointless, and ultimately users will have to pay a higher price for content than what they had prior to the rise of ad blockers.
There are no "technical measures" that can defeat it though other than
1. Anti-block Scripts (which can be ironically be blocked before they run, which won't change due to obvious anti-Malware reasons), or
2. Server side detection of non-loading of ads (which can be thwarted by pretending to load the ads but simply hiding the elements).
As for the economic situation as a whole, we've only got this problem because the advertising industry is like a small obese child with zero sense of self-awareness or self-control that simply doesn't know when to stop:-
- When we had 2-3x 2-3 min ad breaks (4-9mins per hour) on TV people watched them. When that grew to 3x 5-8 minutes (15-24mins per hour), people now skip them all.
- When web ads were unobtrusive, and self-hosted no-one blocked them. Then came animated GIF's, ads with sound, flash video ads, pop-ups, pop-unders, click-jacking, the "need" for 20 scripts just to show an image file, etc. Now you're looking at
up to 80% of a web-site's bandwidth going on ads, social trackers, etc, and as little as 20% content. That's the equivalent of a 12min TV programme being padded to 1 hour with 48mins of ads.
- When our local cinema showed 3-4 trailers, we watched them. Now they expect us to sit through 45mins of ads & trailers, we don't bother going.
- When DVD's came with optional 1-3 trailers, we skipped the ones we definitely didn't want but watched the occasional one that looked interesting. But when that 1-3 became 3-6 and they started using PUOPS (Prohibited User Operations, ie, disable skip, FF, menu, etc, buttons), it became just another reason to build a HTPC which ignores PUOP's and jumps straight to the Title Menu, so now we watch zero. Same goes for those who rip everything to a NAS.
If they learned to use a smaller amount of ads, then those ads could each command a higher revenue. Instead, we've got an ineffective pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap, "wall of noise" which is actively driving people to undermine their entire unsustainable business model. Ad-blockers are simply the reaction to a larger problem, not the problem itself.