My point is really that once we start targeting "ads", and we note that online ads seem to be bad, as you say, then we end up with regulation or legislation about what you can advertise online and how you can do it. But that won't help us when the same techniques then shift towards the real world (and they already are), and then we've got ineffective rules for the new crisis, which is companies tracking you between all the real world locations you go to get a better idea of your interests and what to offer you.
I note it's a spectrum not just to protect some ads. Almost the entirety of that spectrum may be taken up with horrible ads. The important part is identifying what attributes set something acceptable (or even useful) apart from something that is not? Those are the things we want to understand and target, and we'll never even consider them if our approach is "ads are bad". How we frame the question informs our solution. The last thing I want is to replay the spam legislation of the early 2000's (not because I think there was much of a spectrum of spam from good to bad, but because the legislation was laughably ineffective.
It's a risk we probably need to take. AdTech is monetizing hate and this is already effecting the real world in a very obvious way. We're talking about ads, not content. Removing the monetization incentive is one thing, the wastefulness another, but I'm not talking about legislation, rather giving users tools to deal with them. Google developed Chrome for obvious reasons. Microsoft has no interest in protecting users, and AdBuddy (Brave) is pure evil. Mozilla's raison d'etre is doing just that.
I note it's a spectrum not just to protect some ads. Almost the entirety of that spectrum may be taken up with horrible ads. The important part is identifying what attributes set something acceptable (or even useful) apart from something that is not? Those are the things we want to understand and target, and we'll never even consider them if our approach is "ads are bad". How we frame the question informs our solution. The last thing I want is to replay the spam legislation of the early 2000's (not because I think there was much of a spectrum of spam from good to bad, but because the legislation was laughably ineffective.