I totally agree with you on point 1 as i work primarily with non-intrusive ad formats with content that is as relative as possible to the user. There are definitely many "bad" ads and i hate them myself but there is a mismatch between what we perceive and what the data tells us. And this is often the case in Advertising. Consider this: You see an annoying commercial on TV about Butter over and over again, over the course of a month. These are quite intrusive and you certainly wouldn't want to see it again, if you had the choice. Some months later you find yourself in a supermarket with a huuge fridge with a wall of 50 different brands of butter that you never heard of. Whether you believe it or not, the majority of the people will subconsciously grab the butter from the brand of that annoying TV commercial. Why is that? There are several studies on the subject, but a common belief is that we distrust the unknown. This brand, albeit with intrusive, annoying ads has made its way into your "trusted" brands category in your brain. You wouldn't reach for one of the other 49 unknown brands just because you literally know nothing about them. My point being: These annoying/intrusive ads wouldn't continue running if they didn't work for the Advertiser. They are getting a ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) that tells them, it worked! This is the sad reality. I am in no way justifying that bad ads should continue to exist, but those are the facts.

I do still believe that we can change the Advertising landscape for the better though. There will always be bad apples who don't care as long as they get their revenue goals, profit margins, etc. It's kind of like the movie industry. There are a crap-ton of bad movies out there. I don't believe there's anything wrong with the movie industry itself. It's the individuals in that industry who create bad quality content. But this doesn't mean that all movies/ads are bad. What it really means is that the focus should be shifted to the good/useful/beneficial ads. In the movie industry this is easy. You got critics, ratings, etc. We do not yet have a system that properly educates, empowers and enables users to determine what is a good ad for them. This is probably due to the fact that everyone keeps saying how much they hate ads in general so creating a system to rate, control and criticize them sounds way too risky.

As for "good" ads, i don't think i need to point out the benefit to the end-user. A simple example is something like "price-alert" ads. You visit skyscanner for example and you search for a flight. You dont book it because its too expensive. A week later you see an ad for the same flight for $100 less. You click the ad, book the flight. This is the type of ads that i love. They bring value to the user and value to the company. Everybody wins. Make ads more relevant. This is the mantra in my business. If someone has been searching for a lot of ways how to train his dog, why wouldn't he want to see ads on "dog-training facilities in your area" or if you're reading an article about Red Hot Chili Peppers biography, why not receive an ad about their upcoming tour passing through your city? I see the value for both sides in all of these