Advertising in my experience as an end user has been very ineffective.
The ads that I see on Facebook are very obviously based on my browsing history/cookies - I look at a mechanical keyboard on Lazada and decide to not buy it. Next I go to Facebook and get ads about a keyboard on Lazada - no discounts, exact same model. It could've shown me similar keyboards, gave me a lower price, or anything that adds value than just showing me the exact same thing I just decided not to buy.
Advertising for the sake of letting people know something exists is not particularly valuable to the end user, and most of the time they are not even able to predict correctly what people are interested in.
Has anyone actually bought something because of an advertisement?
There's the worse (and very common) case: you decide to buy it, and still see ads about that keyboard you just bought, in case, you know, you'd want another (and even if you did, isn't having it in front of you and liking it more efficient than an ad?).
Billboard companies and People magazine are able to sell ads without knowing who saw the ad. Why do advertisers online suddenly need to know everything about me? Billions have been spent building crappy ad-tech and to assemble profiles and I'd be surprised if it's been a net gain overall when you factor in the externalities of it all (tracking, power consumption, bandwidth usage, malware, etc...).
I feel no ethical issues with using my DVR to skip ads, u-block to stop tracking in my browser, or changing the radio station in my car when an ad starts playing.
/rant