I would gladly trade today's "internet", with all the obnoxious and intrusive ad spam that I spend way too much time trying to avoid with both hardware and software, for a banner on the top of a web page that congratulates me for visiting a weird corner of the web.

I would characterize the ads of yesteryear as, more often than not, straight up malware. As in, definitely trying to skim your personal info using fake-site phishing tactics, or get you to download and execute malicious code. Particularly nasty ones would basically hijack your browser and make it uncloseable, or literally fill the screen with replicating popups.

The current state of Internet ads, which is mostly just exactly the same car, consumer goods, and travel agency ads you see on TV, plus the modern version of informercial doohickey ads, is much more benign IMO.

The ads of yesteryear tried to exploit the ad networks to deliver malware or spyware.

The ad networks of today just come bundled with the same malware or spyware that yesteryear's malicious ads tried to deliver.

Agreed. That's not even mentioning the state of "apps", both mobile and desktop, that now come with tracking features that would make Bonzi Buddy blush.

That didn't last long, by the mid-2000's Opera already had advanced popup and content blocking...

As someone who worked IT for students and staff at a large American university (enrollment in the 25k range) I can safely say that I have never, ever seen Opera in the wild on devices, work, personal, or otherwise.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Opera Mini was relatively popular in the beginning of the web when people were primarily browsing on 2G devices with the transition to 3G just starting. Websites were smaller back then but it was great at stripping out a lot and compressing everything so that you could browse the web on such a slow connection.

Opera's features went on to inspire other browsers...