Or maybe, just maybe, the entire industry is crap and so many people are complicit such that it becomes a self-sustaining problem.
If you're defining "ads" to be a "problem", then it turns the statement into a meaningless tautology. Only crappy brand use ads, because brands that use ads are crappy.
Hey, you're starting to get it, but not quite.
Only crappy brands use ads, because ads pollute my very valuable time, my very valuable window of vision, my very valuable hearing, and my very valuable sanity in trying to stay safe against malware hiding in advertisements. That's on top of wasting my valuable money convincing me to buy things that I don't want to buy.
If a brand really wants me to use their product, then make a great product and show off its features in demos, at conferences, and it will eventually get to me by word of mouth. One friend showing me how a product has improved their life is worth at least five-figure digit counts of ads shown to me, if not six-figure counts.