Ask HN: Did Ads ever bring something good into your life?

Never. Even with targeted advertising. Targeted advertising is a joke especially on Facebook since you talk about coffee on there just once, and you're bombarded with coffee ADs. I know how I like my coffee, and I don't need shiny coffee maker machines that are apparently 'barista grade' and better than my own setup.

Back in the day, yes. https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-05/page/n69/m...

Lots of things! Probably too many to list out.

Mostly in the context of "I didn't even know this product/service/event existed".

Or sometimes ads are useful for timing. We want to buy a new car, but now is obviously an awful time to buy and manufacturers aren't even bothering to advertise. We'll wait and see until there are decent incentives to bother active shopping again.

I learned a tremendous amount from early computer advertising in the pre-internet days. Companies had to do more education back then in order to sell these products, which were not widely understood or available.

Ads got me out of the habit of watching television and listening to radio. If not for uBlock Origin it probably would have gotten me out of the habit of reading on the Web, too.

µBlock Origin

lots and lots of $$$