I see this with SuddenLink as well, and it's very aggravating just for usability reasons, much less the fact that they don't deserve the ad revenue.
Usually I'm one character off the URL I meant to type, and all I want to do is go to my location bar and fix it. But instead, I'm redirected to $NEW_URL, which requires me to completely retype the desired URL. And since I'm then angry because of the stupid ad page, I sometimes mistype it again. :)
"In fact that Thomas Jefferson was a touch pissed when he penned the Declaration of Independence because the Royal Mail printed advertisements on the letters that were returned to him undeliverable, and he thought that was a little shystery."
China Telecom and CNC do this as well, but funny when you mis-typed domain like google.com] then it hijack to a ASP.NET SQL error page. I guess someone can even SQL inject their database if you manipulate the HOST header manually.
Anyway I have my private DNS server, blacklisted ISP's IP's and tunnel DNS queries through IPv6 to avoid GFW's DNS spoofing.
Still, it seems like a simple case of electronic fraud, if they're rewriting packets. If they're only doing this for customers querying their own DNS servers, let users vote with their wallets, I say.
Comcast started doing this (they call it "Domain Helper"). It looks they've at least made some effort to make it less evil than, say, Verisign's "Site Finder" from a few years back. It seems to only intercept NXDOMAIN where the hostname is www.*, and they offer a way to opt out at https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/ .
Usually I'm one character off the URL I meant to type, and all I want to do is go to my location bar and fix it. But instead, I'm redirected to $NEW_URL, which requires me to completely retype the desired URL. And since I'm then angry because of the stupid ad page, I sometimes mistype it again. :)