Unfortunately, I think ads are going to get worse before they get better. The huge hotness in marketing right now is using AI and the trove of data to write personalized ad copy for every recipient. Right now it's expensive enough that not a ton of people are doing it, and the ones who are are only targeting a small niche of people, but I expect that the economics will improve quickly.

Given Microsoft's full dive into gathering personalized information, integrating those collection pipelines deeply into the operating system, and integrating AI into the OS, it seems likely to me that personalized ads are coming to a Windows system near you.

On a related note, gnome weather is minimalist, very lightweight, and entirely ad free.