I would characterize the ads of yesteryear as, more often than not, straight up malware. As in, definitely trying to skim your personal info using fake-site phishing tactics, or get you to download and execute malicious code. Particularly nasty ones would basically hijack your browser and make it uncloseable, or literally fill the screen with replicating popups.

The current state of Internet ads, which is mostly just exactly the same car, consumer goods, and travel agency ads you see on TV, plus the modern version of informercial doohickey ads, is much more benign IMO.