Anyone who tells you all ads systems are a little bit evil is telling the truth.
Anyone who tells you all ads systems are equally evil is trying to sell you pop-ups, spyware, email spam, and worse.
The “adtech marketplace” is a pit of festering corruption that goes way, way beyond anything that you can do with Google ads. There are shitholes out there still trying to figure out how to show you pop-ups just like back in Y2K before pop-up blocking — by compromising your browser security to do it.
I’d suggest anyone who’s interested in what ads systems are actually like, go sign up as an advertiser on Google and then on Facebook for comparison. See what you can do. See what they actually do want to sell you. Don’t spend a dollar; don’t buy a single ad; just see what the product being sold to advertisers actually is. You might be surprised, one way or another.
Like they say, “do your own research”. But not by watching videos that agree with you. If you want to see what these companies really sell to advertisers, go try pretending to be an advertiser. They’ll let you do that.