The problem aren't ads per se. Ads in newspapers and magazines were always fine. There, the advertisers would directly (via their agencies) close contracts with the publishers, based on the typical audience of the publication. A lot of these ads even can be considered part of the content. Most computer magazines of the past had sometimes as much value in the ads as in the articles. Because after all, ads can (and should) be the way a potential customer can find out about a product or service.
The problem with web ads was and is, that the nature of the ad business was changed completely. Rather that a publisher made contracts with the advertisers themselves, ad networks acted as a middleman. Publishers would no longer run ads of their clients, but rent out part of their web space to the ad networks, who would control the content posted on their sites. While this produced a lot of easy income to the publishers (they just rented out the space, had no further work to do), it had grave consequences:
- it introduced tracking of the web users to target ads, as the ad targetting was no longer done by linking it to the publication, with all the unacceptable consequences to privacy
- it far too often created anoying or even offensive ads, as there was little or no curation
- beyond annoying ads, far too often plain malware was distributed via the ad channel
So I am glad to hear that web ads in these form are dying. I hope the web publishing industry reacts in time and goes back to a more classic advertisement model. I don't mind reasonably presented ads which don't endanger my privacy or computer security. I even would be really interested in ads that are informative again. There are some websites out still, which seem to have direct ad contracts like print magazines and just integrate them in their page layout. And of course, they are not blocked by ad blockers, so they remain effective.