As the article itself mentions, ads are not inherently bad. When justified, it's a way for a company X to say "hey, I've this product Y that does Z", informing

As the article itself mentions, ads are not inherently bad. When justified, it's a way for a company X to say "hey, I've this product Y that does Z", informing the market. However, things go south very rapidly in our world, and is far from this simple honest task of informing the market. Wikipedia banner falls more or less in the honest category. It's even slightly better as the population "paying" for the product (through gifts) are already using it, and know its quality and its flaws.