I disagree with it being cheaper. One of the major costs is that we have an entire ad-driven ecosystem, aggressive attention economy, and the many potential alternatives that could never compete with a gargantuan ad conglomerate that has the leverage in one field to completely make all competition infeasible in others. It looks cheaper to us, but only because the price we have paid is that great things that may have existed never had a chance to.

There are many difficult-to-estimate costs for monopolies, especially ones like this. That does not mean that the costs do not exist. That's the entire point in making people believe that things are "free" or "cheap", you rob them of even the opportunity to even evaluate alternatives to realize how much better it could be. There are very good reasons that these kinds of things should be illegal.