Great thoughts. Thanks for sharing.

Some additional thoughts that build on your post to dig deeper into this topic from various angles:

The ad-version/pay-version was quite widely used in the 80s/90s at TV-Stations. Many stations had more channels - some on ads and some on a subscription model: Free TV with ads for the consumer and Pay TV as an ad-free version.

In the Internet Age, one platform can do both, which is what YouTube is demonstrating.

What is the benefit, in my opinion? It would be interesting to see the metrics. Some people might be occasional readers that benefit from reading three articles only per month.

Medium introduced this method, in my opinion, to nicely ask readers to sign up for a subscription. A few that want to read more content might do so, while others simply stay away. Medium for sure knows the exact number of readers in both categories.

Is the number significant enough to attract advertisements? I don't know, but it might be worth looking into charging the occasional "for-free" reader with ads that produce more revenue for medium, which can be spread over all writers for their external reads and views. I don't believe that occasional readers would quit because of that.

Maybe it is worth taking it a step further to open up the "advertisement version" beyond three articles per month. Whether it cannibalizes the current business model or increases the revenue needs some analysis with the available data points at medium.

Paying subscribers should stay ad-free in any case.

I could imagine as an idea without medium data behind it that the same type of people that pay a subscription will also do so in the future to get the ad-free experience. At the same time, the occasional 3 article reader won't mind, but some might consume more articles which leads to more advertisement revenue streams without cannibalizing the paying subscribers.