I'm not saying ad blocking started the problem, but it's now a major contributor to this vicious circle.
The growing trend is that ads are now disguised into "content", and tools like adblock largely contribute to this problem: It's easier to show an ad to your audience if they believe it's actual content, adblock can't do anything about that. For example just check how many personal finance bloggers out there talk about personal capital, wealthfront, or betterment, and look at how many of those are ads in disguise.
I'd rather have ads identified as such on my site (adsense comes to mind) than articles touting a product while claiming it's a review or a tutorial. I'm not afraid to say ad blocking is going to lead many site owners to be dishonest with their audiences, it already does. How long can a site owner reject juicy affiliate marketing offers for "sponsored articles" or "reviews" when the alternate revenue source (ads) is going down every year due to the growing trend of ad blocking?
If you haven't watched it already, I strongly recommend South Park's latest season to get a funny representation of a growing and concerning problem.