I'm not interested in the ads, so I don't notice them if they're not shoved in front of what I am interested in.

I can see that if you consider ads to be inherently offensive, you would notice them wherever they appear, and be annoyed.

But that's not where most people are.

People do. My dad doesn't install an adblocker because he simply doesn't care. I wouldn't either if it wasn't for the serious performance impact.

Although it's getting harder and harder since many platforms try to blend their ads in with the actual site content, I can avoid them reliably well by checking metadata such as the poster, some indication that it's an ad, or if the content is clearly different from what I was expecting.

I wouldn't say it's as bad as potholes on the road, since ads are more predictable.