Printed media can have ads. So should digital media?
That said, I wish digital media stopped wholesale delegating the work of serving ads to third parties and had proper control over experience and privacy—what is delivered how and who tracks whom.
The difference between printed, radio, and television ads is that they are tracking distribution rather than people. (I realize that this is not strictly true, but people had to opt-in to tracking with traditional media.)
The web has taken an industry that already had reputation for deceptive tactics and have handed them tremendous powers through data collection.
Should advertising be banned because of that? I doubt that it would be effective since the advertising industry has created an environment where tracking people is the norm. Banning advertising would simply shift the focus of that data collection so that it is less visible.
It would also be incredibly difficult to ban advertising. Legislation would have to create a clear definition of what advertising is and deal with a medium and business world that crosses national borders. If you don't consider the former, such legislation would have unintended consequences of the freedom of speech. In the case of the latter, it would be far more difficult to reach international agreements than with other online regulations (regulations that are already difficult to enforce) since advertising is considered legitimate in many cases while standards for advertising will differ.
Require a strictly unconditional opt-in you can revoke at any time and the problem of data collection solves itself. None of these business models would work if they required meaningful consent. The missunderstanding about who is allowed to use my data is at the core of this problem. We tend to talk a lot of the lawless west that (was) the internet, but we somehow fail to mention an industry who has exploited missing regulations on private data. Just because they werent banned from exploiting this until now, doesnt mean it should continue any longer.
Because the digital ads are something else entirely. They're often an order of magnitude larger (in MB), they contain tracking, they sell my information whether I want them to or not, they often contain malware. Maybe of them play audio or video.
I'm in favor of banning ads everywhere. I think they provide a negative overall value on the economy by distorting competition and consumers' perception.
That said, I wish digital media stopped wholesale delegating the work of serving ads to third parties and had proper control over experience and privacy—what is delivered how and who tracks whom.