It's not so much that people like ads, as that they are so inured to them that they don't even see them enough to get annoyed by their presence. Sometimes I set up a new computer and forget to install AdBlock for a long period, simply because I can't tell the difference between a clean page, and a page filled with ads I just don't mentally register.
Well, yes, ad blindness works for banner ads, but recently it seems many sites (newspapers in particular) insist on having a big ad front and center that you have to manually dismiss in order to access the page. You can't ignore those.
