Advertising - paying for our free(mium) world for how long?

Ads - no wiki definition needed this time I think
I recommended TweetCaster to Thijs Muis the other day, for Android, and the first thing he said after installing it was:

@MartijnLinssen has ads! Not my app so far, but @tweetdeck isn't the best either

I don't see ads anymore. Well maybe I see them, maybe I don't - entering a grey area there. The difference between hearing and listening is clear, but what about seeing? Is it viewing when you allow it to enter your brain? Eyeballing? Perceiving? Dunno really.
Fact is, I don't see ads. Not on the web, mobile, nowhere. I think I just developed a scotoma for that really

On a related note, I asked Andrew Swenson:

@wordpost The real problem is: what happens to free(mium) when co's find out no one pays attention to ads?

Ads pay for our free world out here online - or mere goodwill. What does happen when companies find out that we all ignore ads and never pay attention to them? Or don't we? Or do they just think we don't?

I honestly don't know. The only time when I notice ads, is when they obstruct my way in into a website, or keep shifting the content on my mobile because the ads don't really agree with viewing the website via mobile. Or when there are so many of them, that I have to labyrinth my way around them trying to read the content I'm looking for. Or when the website takes more than 5 seconds to load - I assume that's either ads or just a crap website, and I'm off - blacklist ticked in my head

Who loves ads? Raise your hands please. Those who do, only mean "I love certain ads that are really cool and funny, because the vast majority of them treats us all like laboratory rats".
Yet, ads fund an awful lot. One thing is for sure: companies pay to advertise - ask Google, whose 97% of revenue is from ads

Ads are surrounding us everywhere. In 1990, the Netherlands got their first commercial television channel, and their number is now at 7. Where ads used to be scarce, their number now reaches 3-4 times per hour, and fortunately there are laws maxing them out at 20% of total broadcasting time - but sometimes it feels like most you see is ads

With Social surrounding us everywhere too, how will this situation change? Will we see more ads, better targeted ones? If you have Gmail and search the web every now and then (...) you know what I mean - it's almost scary really to see ads for that what you searched for, show up just over your inbox.
Or will Social affect the advertising scene in such a way that ads can be decimated? After all, when we're all online with a more or less complete profile, and tweet and update our thoughts, feelings and findings, giving away our preferences to the public. That should allow for much better targeting than the usual shattergun approach, and is the reason why Mark Zuckerberg claims the age of privacy to be over, notwithstanding his own completely empty Info page.

If so, where will funding for our free(mium) world come from? Who will pay for Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn?