They are always marked. For me, ad blindness works almost as well as an ad blocker. Of course not for everyone, or people wouldn't pay for the ads.
On the other hand, making money from ads requires attracting users at very large scale. You can see this with Facebook and Google who try to make their product universally used, to the point where they have major initiatives to make their services available in third-world countries.
A subscription-based service deliberately leaves out people who are unwilling to pay. Even if those who do pay get better service (sometimes but not always true), there is a loss of utility from serving fewer users, particularly on the low end.
"Ads or subscription-based" is a false dichotomy though. There are many other options (https://gist.github.com/ndarville/4295324) which don't require excluding those who can't pay, and don't, as the quote describes, revolve around getting people to click more ads.
On the other hand, making money from ads requires attracting users at very large scale. You can see this with Facebook and Google who try to make their product universally used, to the point where they have major initiatives to make their services available in third-world countries.
A subscription-based service deliberately leaves out people who are unwilling to pay. Even if those who do pay get better service (sometimes but not always true), there is a loss of utility from serving fewer users, particularly on the low end.