Online advertising as a concept is fundamentally unethical? I think you're speaking in hyperbole here. Stealing user data without consent (or with fake here read this 500 pg legalise consent) is unethical for certain.
But a bike blog putting ads for bike saddles on the bottom of their page to pay for their server costs and writing staff? Hard to see how that's unethical unless you think selling anything is unethical.
I came here to say this. I don't think that advertising is inherently unethical, but profit makes unethical behavior in advertising inevitable. The article talks about the scenario where I have a product that I think people will want but don't know about, so I'm giving them information about it. Win/win/win -- the site gets some money for the work they put into the content that they care about, I get (net positive) money from my customer, the customer gets a product that they wanted anyway, and access to the site they were interested in reading. But it's almost always more like I have some money and want more, and it's much more profitable to use shady means to manipulate people who don't really want my product that they do, so I will pay site owners to facilitate the manipulation, both by giving me user data and optimizing for their attention instead of the content that they care about (more manipulation), and the user/customer loses many times over, because they have a product that they didn't want, paid more for it than it was worth, had degraded browsing experience of the content they were interested in, and have sacrificed privacy in the process.
Advertising is unethical in my opinion when it lies or misleads, or it fosters fears and impulses that negatively impact individuals quality of life, or their social contribution and therefore others' QoL.
One example is advertising toys to kids during kids programming: most of this is done in a way that makes kids feel left out for not having the toys, relies on FOMO, envy, and molds susceptible children into more jealous and materialistic people. It misleads them with its imagery into thinking they will be extremely happy if they just have that thing.
I think that perhaps even the majority of what is done as accepted practice in advertising (across all its forms) is harmful, and further, it will stay that way because the $ales a campaign generates are the only measure of success as far as success is rewarded.
Now you are simply describing advertising. I do not find it unethical, maybe unpleasant at most. It is the engine of commerce and driving progress. It is a sign of abundance of choice. And let's not forget a company still has to create a compelling product - no ads can override my free will.
It's simply wrong to assume people would gladly want to be exposed to ads in general. The only unethical thing here is to call people unethical who simply decide not to participate in ad viewing.
There is no such thing as ethical ad. Why would anyone leave money on the table and not do scummy / google / facebook ads. Not like anything is stopping them unless the ad industry gets killed by law.
if we are going to talk about ethics I think ad ethics should also be brought into the conversation as well then, because not every website uses ads in a respectable manner
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