When I'm watching American sports like the NBA, I'm surprised by the amount of ads you have to sit through. It's a stark contrast to watching football (soccer). Although I think the upcoming FIFA World Cup is going to adopt the American-style ad model.
When I'm using a mobile app on my phone, I hate having to wait for the disruptive ads to go away. When I'm watching a YouTube video, I hate when ads come up just as I'm really enjoying the content.
Back when I was using Facebook, I hated how infested with ads it was. It was almost unusable.
I see people here complaining about ads a lot, and a recent example is the front-page thread here about LinkedIn - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47613981#47614309
But if they are hated so much, why do companies spend billions of dollars on ads. They clearly work... don't they?
In all my years on the internet, I've never clicked on an ad to make a purchase (okay there was one time when a particular ad on buying cheap domains appealed to me, but that was the only time), but I've read that ads are not always about immediate conversions, but also about embedding themselves in your mind. So whenever you are in need of a service or product related to what you saw on that ad, you'd be psychologically drawn to that brand.
It made sense to me, even if its manipulative.
But if you hate ads so much, how do you propose people create awareness for their products or services, should they rely strictly on word of mouth? Are there examples of successful products/companies that succeeded and scaled purely by word of mouth? Is it just the disruptive aspect of ads that you hate, the personalized ads specifically? or are you fundamentally opposed to ads in general?
Talk to me. I'm not picking a fight, just trying to learn.
Edit: It's what ruined Reddit for me, and I can only use old reddit.