That's not really true. There's a misconception that publishers only get paid for clicks, when actually many (perhaps even most for certain types) ads are sold by impression. And that's never going to fully go away; if you sell luxury cars you just want to do a branding campaign. You want to get your logo in front of NYTimes.com readers. You don't care how many click.

tl;dr it's much better for publishers if you see ads but never click them vs blocking them.