One problem with the speculation is that there are many ways things can go. It would be like to trying to imagine explaining Maximum Carnage to comics fans in a world where Secret Wars was never published.

One idea might be to have Peter and Ben alternate being Spider-Man. This lets Marvel have their cake and eat it too, and can be explained in-universe as a strategy for Peter and Ben to keep their identity secret. Two of the monthlies can focus on Peter, and two can focus on Ben. I don't know how long that would last, since it seems inevitable that the status quo would collapse. And then we'd likely have one of them taking a new identity. And it would probably be Ben. Although if Peter Parker could have a Scarlet Spider type identity, it could connect with readers.

A different way it could've gone would have been for Marvel to continue longer with Ben Reilly as Spider-Man. Maybe something would have connected with readers, but I'm not sure what that could be. The talent on Spider-Man was decent, but there was no one who blew up like Joe Mad. The decisions involving creative teams seemed doomed for failure, as if the editorial instincts were wrong for the moment. But maybe there's a world in which the Spider-Man comics were better and more popular with Ben Reilly as Spider-Man than the ones that were published (I am intimately familiar with that time period.) If the series kept chugging along with Ben Reilly as the lead, it's going to include new decisions which will be as hard to predict as explaining the pathway to Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen, Superior Spider-Man, Civil War and No Way Home to a fan in 1998.