I think the problem probably lies with the difference between your point of view versus his.

Advertising is not 'prima facie' unethical. It's actually a societal good. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but if you can set aside your emotions with regards to the discussion, and view it from a distance, it's not too hard to show.

To start off, I've never actually met anyone who doesn't want advertising at all (despite their claims). They just use the term advertising to refer to those kinds of advertisements they don't like, or find too intrusive.

Advertising is, at it's base, finding a way to deliver a message to someone who is doing something else. Thus, getting rid of advertising means no more signs on buildings (yes, being forced to read the name of a store as you walk down the street is a form of advertising). Even if you were willing to accept how difficult this would make it to discover businesses (life harder for the end user), this would make it nigh impossible for new entrants to any market. That means that pretty much all commerce would be funneled into a few catch-all stores, and not only would the economy suffer, but consumer power would be greatly diminished.

Advertising indirectly improves the quality of life of people who have more time than money. (Generally the less money you have in total, the more advertising benefits you.) This is because advertising as a source of revenue is a useful tool to amortize the cost of a product over many users. Free-to-watch TV would be mostly non-existent without advertising, not to mention all of the internet services like search and news; also consider free newspapers like the Metro or 20 Minutes.

That doesn't mean that I don't understand what people really get worked up about. Let's forget spam and obnoxious blinking signs, or having to punch the monkey. It's like how knives are great in the hands of chefs, but not murderers. Crime is crime, and someone like the poster of this article is not trying to defend those kinds of practices.

Let's get into what people tend to get really worked up about: customized advertising. However, it's not the customized advertising that really bothers people, it's the fear of abuse of tracking. In a world where customized advertising was perfected, you would see 95% less ads. Why? Every ad you see that isn't a match is a waste for everyone involved. The business doesn't want to pay, because you aren't interested, and the user doesn't want to see it, because it's distracting and wastes your time.

But still, tracking, that bothers you, right? You don't want an advertiser to know your kink, right?

Well, what if the advertiser is the store that happens to serve whatever your kink is? People shop in adult stores, and they have no problem letting the store know that they're interested in their wares, so clearly it's not just the stores learning that is the problem. The problem is the abuse. People want to choose who they trust to share information with, and don't wish to risk. But... if you're clicking on an ad from some store that delivers your own brand of kink, you're okay sharing that with them, so what's the problem?

Well, as an example, maybe if you're a teacher you don't want your community to know that you like buying purple teddy bears because it might cost you your job. You're okay shopping in a purple teddy bear store... but if the purple teddy bear store had advertising that only targeted teachers, suddenly someone knows that you're a teacher that likes purple teddy bears, and you consider that dangerous.

So yes, abuse is a problem. This is why advertisers actively engage in trying to solve the abuse problem. This is why the advertising industry is looking for ways to move forward.

Yes, they also fight the change, because in their own eyes, they're trustworthy (to at least their own standards), and change is hard and expensive. But that doesn't make advertising unethical, 'prima facie' or otherwise.