I get what you're trying to say, but here's a counter example. I have a hobby of astrophography. I live in a rural area without many other people nearby interested in the stars, much less a highly technical hobby like astrophography.

Asking on message boards like cloudynights, or reddit gets you a lot of well meaning beginners offering advice outside of their skill level.

I'm currently building an observatory and I need input on which mount to use in my observatory. I don't have a good concept of what to buy for it as I've only dealt with really beginner mounts and I'm not a beginner anymore, and there's no astrophography retail stores within travel distance. Online advice is poor and hard to weed out those who are beginners meaning well and those who actually know what they're talking about.

However, to pull us back to what we're talking about here, I get a magazine for the industry called Sky and Telescope and it has ads. To me, ads are one of the best things about that magazine because it lets me know what options I have that I wouldn't otherwise be aware of, or have any way to compare.

Though to be fair, ads in a magazine don't spy on you, don't infect your computer, don't move and steal attention and don't follow you around. But I think there is a place for targeted, well behaved ads.