I remember those days. Back then I'd say 99.97% of those horrible ads you describe were on spam / bad websites. The normal, good sites that we went to every day

I remember those days. Back then I'd say 99.97% of those horrible ads you describe were on spam / bad websites. The normal, good sites that we went to every day had very, very tame ads. For the most part, as long as you visited reputable sites back then, the ads were not a big deal. Today the reputable sites are an absolute mess with huge, bloated and completely unusable ads. So yes the ads back then on non-reputable sites were worse because of what the browser makers allowed websites to do but when you compare the reputable websites? There is no contest that today is far, far worse.