Sorry for the late reply, I didn't think to check back on this :)
A couple reasons:
Back when I did use them, I got really bothered by sites breaking, and I'd rather have the ads than dealing with "is this broken because of my ad blocker or is the site broken". Now, I've just gotten to the point where I don't really mind.
The other part is there's enough content I consume that is supported by ads that I would like to continue supporting, without having to consciously opt into it (e.g. news sites; I don't want to pay a subscription for every newspaper but am happy to contribute to what little money they get from ads)
Not OP but I do something similar, because I know each ad I see costs someone $$$. This leads to odd behavior like making sure I let youtube ads play for their full duration and I'll usually click on sponsor links + their pages enough to trigger the first flag of a sales pipeline, ensuring the company responsible for the ad pays as much as possible for it.
