Good vs Bad attention in Marketing

Two weeks ago, I talked about Facebook marketing and its effectiveness. This week, I came across an article talking about good vs. bad attention.

In the article, author Christopher Carfi defines the two types of attention generated by marketing. Like good and bad profits, there are two opposite types of attention. Good attention is gained through "going above and beyond" and "delighting someone, surprising them, amusing them, or triggering an empathetic emotion". This positive response can also lead to good profits, which stem from the same place. Bad attention is "interruptive... bad and inefficient". The author uses pop up ads as an example.

Ads like this are used all the time. The only time anyone ever clicks on them is by accident. So how much are companies spending to place these ads on the side of webpages, in the hopes that someone will click them? When an pops up saying, "Congratulations, you've won!" or "You're the 1,000,000th visitor!" everyone knows not to click those. In reality, we've all developed blinders to that type of ad. People find those ads annoying, and we make sure not to click them at all. This type of ad gains bad attention.

Getting back to the Facebook ads, I believe they fall under the same category. People are frustrated by the stupid attempts at targeted ads that Facebook employs, or at least I am. So why do companies bother with these ads at all? Do the Facebook ads garter negative attention for the advertisers? Are they worth the money?