Early on, through the early 2000's, I'd say yes. ftp:// links were often posted on web sites. There was some expectation that clicking those links worked and would download a file. These days? Why bother...
The big advantage of FTP is that server support for resuming partial downloads was generally supported, unlike HTTP. Of course the browsers never implemented the resume feature so there wasn't much incentive to use FTP in the browser. Plus Internet connections got better so the need to work around your shitty connection diminished over time.
HTTP supports range requests, which can be used to resume partial downloads.
That was added in HTTP/1.1 (1997), and even then it took a while for browsers and servers to support it.
Server support was spotty for a long time. Browser support was also slow to appear.