You know, sometimes that's true, but sometimes they really do just communicate what a product is and why you might want it. There are a couple podcasts I listen to where the ads are almost uniformly worthwhile — for someone, if not for me. Podcasts with obstreperous or manipulative ads tend not to be worth listening to anyway; good podcasters value their audiences too much to insult them.

I agree with Jason completely

That is indeed an issue with advertising, but it's not the same issue as with most other ads; at least not the one most people object to, which is the privacy and security violations of comprehensive tracking of personal information delivered via exploitable, executable code.

I believe most people object ads because they find them annoying, people who worry about privacy and security as the main reason are a minority (maybe more expressive in HN, but not in the general population of ad block users).