I see a lot of disagreement about whether ads are “manipulative” or not, and I generally agree with OP’s example in another comment about a contra dance. I have also organized various clubs and activities before, and I don’t really think “ads you see when using a website” and “ads you see when glancing at your university’s activities wall” are all that different, ethically speaking.
I think the “manipulation” aspect has far more to do with the content of an ad than where it’s placed. Concerns of this sort are ones I would level at someone who works in marketing, not someone who works for Google. The most salient example I can think of are beauty product ads, which play a major role in perpetuating toxic beauty standards (even if they’re not guilt-tripping you personally into buying more makeup to fix your face wrinkles). But again, I don’t think this is something the people working for AdSense have control over (unless they do?).
My concerns about ads for someone who works for Google (or any other software or browser company), would be concerns (as OP mentions) about ads making websites unusable, especially on mobile. This includes things like YouTube increasing the number of ads you have to watch before a video starts* as well as pop-up ads and automatic videos that play on articles. If your job involves figuring out how to incorporate ads into the browsing experience without making them break or stall, that’s helpful as far as I’m concerned.
There is probably also something to be said for the harm caused by Google’s monopoly on the AdSense system, but I don’t know enough about tech or internet management to comment on it beyond my vague suspicions.
*ACrackedPot below also mentions the use of ads as a punishment to punish free-version users into paying for a subscription, and while I wouldn’t call this “unethical” or insidious the way that makeup ads are, I think it’s a dick move.
I would use an adblocker that compromised by only blocking ads (and “you’re supposed to be seeing an ad here :(” notifications) that move and/or cover text. I said this in a comment on the last post, but I wasn’t kidding when I said ads make some websites truly unusable (or slow them down to that point). Just last night I was using Chrome with no adblocker (I usually use Firefox with ublock origin), and citationmachine.net/ was so slow and cluttered that I ended up switching back to Firefox to make my single citation and copy it back to my document in Chrome.
I would be happy with an adblocker that froze these moving ads and removed the “Ace hardware” ad which is covering the content as well as the HBO Max video (which plays sound). The CVS/Paypal ad is duplicated in this screenshot, but as the ads refresh they are usually not duplicated.
If all ads looked like ads on slatestarcodex used to, I would be fine with them. I’ve bought things from facebook ads before and I don’t mind being shown content I’m likely to buy (and I find facebook’s strategy of disguising its ads like posts to be misleading, but minimally disruptive). But I cannot navigate around an internet that shows 4+ ads on any page I visit. It’s excessive.