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> Advertising necessarily extracts value out of your attention, while simultaneously devaluing your browsing/watching/listening/driving/etc experience.

While it it usually, maybe even almost always, does, I don't think advertising is required to be a distraction.

If I'm searching for information on a product, say, a pair of headphones for my wife or a diet for myself, and I see ads for headphones or diet books, then that advertising can be very beneficial.

The problem comes when, like in the article at hand, there's a product or service, totally unrelated to what I'm searching for, that's being injected in my attention stream.

Arguably, Google's incredible financial success is founded on making that information infinitesimally more likely to be useful to the reader compared to, e.g., prime-time television.