I would abandom steem. I love the fact that only valuable content shows up on the top, and I hope it stays that way.
Advertisers should buy influence. They can buy steem, lock it up and use their voting power to upvote their own content. That way the people suffering from the ads will benefit financially. Advertisers can also try to pay influencers for upvoting. It will cost much to get visibility, but maybe it will be worth it, and the ecosystem won't suffocate from ads.
Yeah I can understand the frustration with ads. Seems like today companies are getting a bit desperate trying to monetize with ads, but I think it's more a struggle with web properties to survive in the Internet where the trend is toward perfect competition and no profit. Yahoo is one example. Even Drudge I recently noticed obtrusive video ads. There is also a trend with ad-blocking software so monetization becomes more difficult. However I think ads are going to be a natural part of the ecosystem. It can be argued ad revenue sustains the Internet otherwise Google/Facebook/Twitter would have no revenue model... most news/media sites wouldn't exist. I agree it would be better for companies/advertisers to buy influence. I don't mind as much about standard Google/reddit banner ads as much as the obtrusive video ads. Also I think you can censor ads on the frontend so the STEEM blockchain can have some frontends that allow ads and some that don't.