But your ads, and in particular the careful placement you describe are not at all representative of the majority of ads most people see around the Internet.
And your example about the hobbyist-site-gone-nice-pension is not a startup. It's also just an appeal to emotion, when the argument is just that we could do with less advertising in general, and that it would be nice if startups could find or have a different way to monetize.
A lot of ads are is deceptive (though IMO, 90% is a bit high estimate), but more importantly it takes a very real mental cost of constantly having to task-switch: when I'm merely looking for information (which is 99% of the time I'm on the Internet), there is an army of specifically crafted boxes of information strewn in sidebars across the web, doing their utmost best to get me out of that mindset and into the mindset of deciding-to-purchase.
If I actually were to have to suffer that I'd never get anything done. That may sound extreme, but there's more people like me that need their focus and it's fragile. Thankfully there's AdBlock and similar tools.
And your example about the hobbyist-site-gone-nice-pension is not a startup. It's also just an appeal to emotion, when the argument is just that we could do with less advertising in general, and that it would be nice if startups could find or have a different way to monetize.
A lot of ads are is deceptive (though IMO, 90% is a bit high estimate), but more importantly it takes a very real mental cost of constantly having to task-switch: when I'm merely looking for information (which is 99% of the time I'm on the Internet), there is an army of specifically crafted boxes of information strewn in sidebars across the web, doing their utmost best to get me out of that mindset and into the mindset of deciding-to-purchase.
If I actually were to have to suffer that I'd never get anything done. That may sound extreme, but there's more people like me that need their focus and it's fragile. Thankfully there's AdBlock and similar tools.