> Additionally, my perception (from posts and discussions like these, I'm not a financial analyst and I have no meaningful insights into their business) is also that they probably receive enough funding through non-advertising means that they don't actually need to do this if they were to pare back the nonsense spending they're so greatly known for.

Last time I checked, Mozilla received 90%+ of its funding from Google. This is a situation that nobody likes (except Google, of course). These ads are an attempt to diversify income streams.

People are really unhappy that Mozilla gets money from Google, but also extremely vocally unhappy whenever Mozilla attempts to find other sources.

I haven't seen anyone suggest alternate solutions yet.