This is, in my opinion, the worst agenda in the game.
Firstly, it's a 4/2, in a faction with two 3/2s (Accelerated Beta Test and Project Vitruvius). If you aren't planning on over-scoring Ares, then it's a blank 4/2, which makes it strictly inferior to Project Vitruvius, or another in-faction 4/2, Efficiency Committee, which at least gives you 3 extra clicks.
So you would have to over-score it to make it worthwhile. It's not too difficult to overadvance it by one: you're effectively scoring a 5-advance agenda and getting one less point, which is justifiable if you are getting enough value.
But if you only over-score by one, then the result is simply "The runner trashes 1 of his or her installed cards and you take one bad publicity". That's a terrible deal. Consider this: one of the best runner cards in the game is Desperado, because it gives you a credit after every successful run. A bad publicity gives you a free credit before every run, whether or not it is successful, meaning that a bad publicity is more valuable than the best console in the game and the runner would gladly make that trade. Especially since you are never going to hit their Desperado--it's the runner's choice, so they're just going to trash a spare Clone Chip or Datasucker or Symmetrical Visage or something else they don't really need and can easily replace.
So scoring Project Ares as a 4/2 is bad, and scoring it as a 5/2 is actively worse. But, you only ever take one bad publicity: maybe it could be efficient if you go for 6 advancements?
But again, if you're going to try to score an agenda for 6 points, you could score a Mandatory Upgrades or a Vanity Project. Scoring a 4-point agenda, or getting an extra click every turn, is vastly superior to telling the runner to trash two cards and taking a bad publicity. So Ares is still bad with 6 credits.
Let's take it up to 11--eleven advancements, that is, give or take. If you can pull it off, you can utterly destroy the runner's entire rig. With no breakers and no economy, you are basically assured victory. This is the optimal play for this card, giving you the best return for that bad publicity.
But even at it's best, Ares falls short of other agendas. Any technique to score something with 9 points or more could be better applied to Government Takeover or Project Beale, likely winning you the game outright.
The fact is, this is simply not a good card. And I don't foresee that ever changing.