I came from a B2B agency background before my consumer startup gained a little bit of traction. I was, philosophically, anti-ads / push marketing for the most p

I came from a B2B agency background before my consumer startup gained a little bit of traction. I was, philosophically, anti-ads / push marketing for the most part. Then the curtain was pulled back for me on how startup acquisition machines really work. Two points here: 1) the flooding of VC money and subsequent aggressive push for "high growth" essentially funnel cash into online ads. 2) A bit more to your point of ads not being helpful to society, what about the many thousands of users I've acquired through ads who have stayed with my subscription service and have reaped the benefits of what my startup does (not gonna use this space to self promote the actual company)? These are not high-churn users, they are not bots (well, most anyway), and I've personally spoken to many of them who have expressed the happiness we bring them each week. There's a lot of cool shit out there I may not find out about directly from friends or organically through social media (which is a horrible discovery engine anyway). This begs the question: If the ad is relevant to me, why is it "bad"? Now, I can absolutely get on board with an argument against poorly targeted ads or bulky designs that clog up space/speed or simply an overall surplus of them everywhere you go online. But that doesn't mean ads cannot be useful to society.