For what its worth (and its totally fine if you dont see it the same way) a free service that is promoting itself is a special type of advertisement and should be excluded from talking about ad supported content or when using just the phrase ads

That being said it is still equally disruptive but its not trying to schill you something you arent already committed to using and for free service thats an entirely fair way for them to try to get new subscribers and seems more like promotion than advertising

Agree to disagree but i do think its an important distinction when discussing ads