Misskey, which is Japanese-made ActivityPub-enabled social media software, has option to enable ads natively for instance admin.
In most cases, the ads are just non-tracking community ads, like promoting YouTube channel, indie animation, pop-up cafe event, or server hosting service. Usually the ads are matched to instance theme.
People realize that running instances needs money and letting the instance admin to make living from it is acceptable. Having monthly patron oftentimes not enough.
This is different case and country. There are plenty of dead fedi instance from Southeast Asia because the donation itself is not enough as the culture of donation is not the same as Western countries. Most people will just simply use free social media and thinking ads are good tradeoff.
One common problem for fediverse is that most of them are Western-oriented, hard to find people with similar interest and common topics.
Lemmy so far is replicating Reddit, which is tend to one-size-fit-all community. Gaming community? c/gaming is de-facto. Linux community? c/Linux is de-facto. And so on. Sure there are other server, but the one with most active community wins.
I usually use Facebook Groups with hundreds of thousands of people. It’s nice to see groups of really small niche, like “local fried chicken seller,” “temple research South East Asia,” or “Singapore-only comic collector”, etc.
There are plenty groups with similar topic, but entirely different culture. For example general gaming group:
Another example, healthy food groups.
All these communities might be same, but the entire vibe are different. One might more welcoming, other are full or rough jokes, some are okay with multilanguge post (not English only community).
Unless fediverse is able to replicate this, I don’t think it will reach full mainstream, especailly for people in Africa, Middle East, or Asia.
Edit: I also want to see Misskey Channel interoperability, as it has the closest vibe so far with Facebook Groups.