Yes, but not necessarily. I have ads turned on for The Register because they cater to a specific market segment, and also because I like to support the site. T

Yes, but not necessarily. I have ads turned on for The Register because they cater to a specific market segment, and also because I like to support the site. The ads are pretty tightly focused on new technology companies, which I'm interested in. BizCoFoo with a new DB technology that turns stored procedures into pimento cheese sandwiches is not going to find a lot of traction on r/SQL except to generate a lot of noise from people who hate pimento cheese. Ads aren't an "all this" or "all that" sort of thing. I'm not a fan of billboards, because I think they're ugly and hateful, but when I'm travelling in a place I'm not familiar with, it's handy to know that there's a BBQ joint in 17 miles, which may not be featured on Yelp or Foursquare or whatever. Ads can be great if they directly inform you of something you want, need, or are interested in. The ad-tech companies, though, are terrible at doing this algorithmically; e.g., seeing ads for dishwashers everywhere right after you've bought a dishwasher. They're also terrible because the first instinct, when a Web site's ad revenue starts to falter, is to add even more ads from other networks to pump it back up. One or two ads on a Web page is tolerable. Ads that show up every time you hit Page Down? Cancer.