Overall, I hate advertising at a visceral level, so I tend to agree with H20Dude.
But allow me to make a few points from the opposite side of the argument.
I have no problem with billboards. Let's face it, the side of the highway is pretty boring on a long, rural drive, and pretty ugly in the city. Rural billboards give you something to look at, keep you alert, and most importantly, clue you in to businesses ahead. City billboards just blend into the otherwise unsightly background.
Normal ads on web sites are the same way. As long as they don't make noise, or flash, or take up too much screen real estate, they fade into the background. Ideally, they may clue me in to something I'd be interested in knowing about. It's never happened to me yet, but in theory, it might.
If these unobtrusive ads help pay the bills for the web site operators, I'm all for it.
But when they shout or play music at me, when they flash or run videos which take a lot of bandwidth to download, they've essentially declared war on the user. And forced us to fight back with ad blockers and auto-play blockers. That only hurts legitimate advertisers and web sites.
I wish we could call a truce.