I think loads of things got better but advertising just got worse and worse. It's everywhere now. The Internet used to have no advertising. For live sports they have screens on the side of the pitch which constantly change the ads. There are sometimes ads superimposed (computationally) on the pitch grass. Sometimes they make the viewing size of the screen smaller so they can show you an ad around the edge. Or the worst, they just have a banner at the bottom with ads scrolling. Sports jerseys/vehicles etc are more and more cluttered by ads. Obviously the big change in the opposite direction is with streaming vs classic cable but even now streaming is trying to ram ads back in there. As an adult for me Mobile phones have always been available but we're talking pre Smart phones. Smart phones are just another place that I look that has ads and older phones didn't have ads. They had shit screens of course but no ads. YouTube, more and more ads. Podcasts, loads of ads, there used to be none.