Google has bothered me for a while with their lack of advertising ethics. I recently cleared and disabled my youtube history and they're still doing targeted advertising for videos I had searched for and watched weeks earlier. Clearly my history was not truly removed, which was my assumption anyway but the fact they so blatantly show it off is rather disrespectful from a user standpoint.
Honestly I think the best bet moving forward for sites is to have a small minimalistic form of advertising (the way HN does advertisement with job postings for example, even while its just for Ycombinators benefit, is a good example of non-intrusive advertising done correctly), and probably a small subscription fee ($1.99? $4.99? pay what you want? hard to set a price) for users to hide advertising and support the site/service they enjoy using.
Honestly I think the best bet moving forward for sites is to have a small minimalistic form of advertising (the way HN does advertisement with job postings for example, even while its just for Ycombinators benefit, is a good example of non-intrusive advertising done correctly), and probably a small subscription fee ($1.99? $4.99? pay what you want? hard to set a price) for users to hide advertising and support the site/service they enjoy using.