The 94/95 web had no banners. Because most of it was hosted on university servers or some random guy/company just wanted to bear the cost.
I remember the big decision on if adverts should even be allowed... Well here we are. Users get free things. Advertisers pick up most of the bill. The second that model doesnt work sites pack it up. The 'before time' could be there but servers/bandwidth/people are not free. You can minimize those but in the end someone needs to pay the electric bill.
I have been running my own web site for 20+ years without ads. The server and bandwidth costs are minute. I use a basic VPS. I started it when I was still a poor grad student. This is cheaper now than shared hosting was back in the early 2000s and it's easier too. But it's not cheaper than "free" and it's significantly more administrative work than just using a social network. The "people" costs (including my own time fiddling with software configurations) is the biggest barrier.
Same yo, matecha.net live and ad-free since 2004. Not that I have ever had a ton of content, but I have my little slice of the old-school web and always will as long as I'm alive (and as long as the web is around, I guess!)