Relative to the value of advertising to a paper, here is an extreme case I ran into.

A certain “paper” which is published about once a week and consists almost entirely of classified ads offers the following deal:

Internet-Only access to the classifieds at their website: $3.00 a month

One copy of the paper per month plus the Internet access to their website: $1.00 a month

Yes, they charge you $2.00 a month to NOT receive the print edition. Obviously the commercial ads they publish in addition to the many, many classifieds are lucrative. And they charge you 3 times as much NOT to get them as they do to be able to avoid them. The Internet access is far more desirable for the classifieds than the print version, since you can respond to an ad showing what you want to buy. They know that and don’t want to become an Internet-only source.