They pay the business who owns the ad space, who in turns pays the website or app for their space. You pay for the app or website content by watching the ad.

It’s a terrible model, but you are being paid (in content) for watching ads.

I see a lot of references to Ubuntu being filled with ads or scaring people into buying their services, but I’ve been daily driving it for over 15 years on personal desktops and servers and never noticed that. What have I missed?

I never saw the Amazon ad stuff, I hear it was a referral link?

Last I checked Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to 5 machines.

I use apt to manage all my packages and upgrades, including dist-upgrade, maybe that’s why I’ve never noticed snap? Why does snap suck?