Advertising Is a Cancer on Society(jacek.zlydach.pl)
jacek.zlydach.pl
Advertising Is a Cancer on Society
http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html
640 comments
This is a dogmatic viewpoint I think often seen in very technical people who are unwilling to see the interconnectedness of how our society works.
I bet there's any number of things this person values that simply wouldn't exist without advertising.
It's a childish and immature opinion really.
Anyone who hates advertising this much should show their commitment by working at an organization that does not advertise. Loathing advertising and at the same time depending on it for income is deeply hypocritical.
I bet there's any number of things this person values that simply wouldn't exist without advertising.
It's a childish and immature opinion really.
Anyone who hates advertising this much should show their commitment by working at an organization that does not advertise. Loathing advertising and at the same time depending on it for income is deeply hypocritical.
I wanted to mention that advertising kills the ecosystem for free and cheap stuff. People say things like "TV wouldn't exist without advertising," but TV would probably be better without it since networks would have to convince you to pay them, rather than just stop you from flipping through the channels. Certainly the news would be better because TV news tries to tease the viewer to watch past the commercial break with intentionally false and misleading statements.
Advertising isn't free, its costs are just hidden. They wouldn't spend money if it didn't relieve you of yours. People who watch TV do pay for it, it's just that the mechanism by which it happens is a magic trick of persuasion. The only question is do advertisers provide a legitimate service to society that is worth paying for and enough to support what we pay to adertisers. That's the only way advertising can be "free" - if it is self-funded service worth value in and of itself.
IMHO, marketing is a good thing, and advertising can be when it's sufficiently targetted. Getting the word out about a new product is fine. But most traditional advertising that tries to sell an image or feeling is a blight.
Advertising isn't free, its costs are just hidden. They wouldn't spend money if it didn't relieve you of yours. People who watch TV do pay for it, it's just that the mechanism by which it happens is a magic trick of persuasion. The only question is do advertisers provide a legitimate service to society that is worth paying for and enough to support what we pay to adertisers. That's the only way advertising can be "free" - if it is self-funded service worth value in and of itself.
IMHO, marketing is a good thing, and advertising can be when it's sufficiently targetted. Getting the word out about a new product is fine. But most traditional advertising that tries to sell an image or feeling is a blight.
If you stop watching ads for awhile and go back to it you’ll see how mind numbing it all really is.
I aggressively block ads - no exceptions.
I aggressively block ads - no exceptions.
Long, long ago, someone suggested their extremely simple fix for advertising: stop letting companies declare it as a business expense.
The Law of Unintended Consequences always gets you in weird ways, and I'm not a lobbyist or a public policy person, nor do I know anyone highly placed in those fields.
But one of the ways companies slowly fail is by choosing to sell harder instead of making their product better. If we lower the rate of return on advertising dollars by 15%, won't that shift some more money into R&D, logistics and other divisions that provide something approximating value (although one unintended consequence I can see is an increased focus on strip-mining the Third World, literally and figuratively).
The Law of Unintended Consequences always gets you in weird ways, and I'm not a lobbyist or a public policy person, nor do I know anyone highly placed in those fields.
But one of the ways companies slowly fail is by choosing to sell harder instead of making their product better. If we lower the rate of return on advertising dollars by 15%, won't that shift some more money into R&D, logistics and other divisions that provide something approximating value (although one unintended consequence I can see is an increased focus on strip-mining the Third World, literally and figuratively).
Modern advertising is propaganda and agitation. While commercial entities have advertised their wares for as long as there have been commerce[0], the modern mass hallucination inducing form became the norm only after the world wars.
The essence of propaganda is to weave a story and engage the target population in an action that creates commitment to the story and creates secondary effect due to social proof as people see other people committing.
This is the essence of modern marketing as well.
Cancer is not really a well thought out way to describe it, it sounds a bit fanatical.
There is nothing conspiracy like about this. This is all well known and researched.
General public is just kept ignorant of it. I don't know why. Maybe it's because the more you know about how propaganda works the less effective it is? Thus teaching people en mass how propaganda works would make even benevolent attempts at mass mind control less effective.
[0] Branding is nothing new. In the viking age particular german swords were very well thought off - and they had particular inscription on the blade. The brand was so strong that blacksmiths around baltic created "pirate" copies of the blades by writing the same inscription - or, as some were illeterate, attempted to copy the markings resulting in almost-but-not quite correct spellings. As their clients were likely illiterate as well I don't think it mattered for business.
The essence of propaganda is to weave a story and engage the target population in an action that creates commitment to the story and creates secondary effect due to social proof as people see other people committing.
This is the essence of modern marketing as well.
Cancer is not really a well thought out way to describe it, it sounds a bit fanatical.
There is nothing conspiracy like about this. This is all well known and researched.
General public is just kept ignorant of it. I don't know why. Maybe it's because the more you know about how propaganda works the less effective it is? Thus teaching people en mass how propaganda works would make even benevolent attempts at mass mind control less effective.
[0] Branding is nothing new. In the viking age particular german swords were very well thought off - and they had particular inscription on the blade. The brand was so strong that blacksmiths around baltic created "pirate" copies of the blades by writing the same inscription - or, as some were illeterate, attempted to copy the markings resulting in almost-but-not quite correct spellings. As their clients were likely illiterate as well I don't think it mattered for business.
We get rid of it, Google/Facebook/etc. shut down. While social media is of arguable benefits, Google has provided incalculable value to the world. Ads are the magic money fountain that give them the power to organize all of human knowledge, a phenomenal resource anyone can tap.
I would say the theft of attention and concentration is a cancer on society, but I agree overall.
To those who say there is no other model, you are not correct.
To those who say there is no other model, you are not correct.
Compulsory quote
"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't."
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fight_Club_(film)
"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't."
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fight_Club_(film)
Maybe some of it...but without any advertising at all it would be really hard to know what products or out there or even that there is a restaurant on the other end of the block.
Advertising (Which appears to be defined in your broad doc as anything that gets your attention without asking for it first) is the worst way to get people to pay attention to things, except for all the other ways. The alternative to "advertising" is the rate of people discovering new things dropping to 1% of what it is now.
1% of products have natural virality and will be found on their own. The other 99% of products and services in existence, no matter the quality, needs to be promoted so people can find them and use them.
Say you make an app that helps plumbers do their job well. If every plumber used it, plumber productivity would go up 50%, making life easier for all. It cost you years of your time and lots of money to make this great app, and you need a lot of plumbers to buy it to afford to continue working on it.
There's a big plumber app on the market already, but yours is way better.
How do you get plumbers to hear about your product?
1) The press? Uninterested. Plumber magazines or sites? Very low traffic - no way to scale.
2) Call or knock on doors of every plumber near you? If everyone did this, the spam would be unreal. Also inefficient and not scalable.
3) Referrals? You get some, but most plumbers aren't chomping at the bit to help their competitors. And because you started with so few, referrals are a snails pace and by no means exponential.
4) Organic postings and SEO? The big plumber app is way ahead of you. And 100 other worse apps clog up the listings. No one sees your posts.
See the problem? Without ads, you can't grow many many categories of genuinely valuable products. Even if no one else is advertising, you can't really grow without them.
This is barely a hypothetical by the way. I've worked with a dozen companies with similar situations.
Here's a real life example:
I was just hired to scale marketing for a particular app. This app currently has over 100 real reviews online, averaging 4.9 stars out of 5. Retention is nuts - 98% of people who ever started using the product (which has a monthly fee) are still using it. The company is three years old.
Perfect to take off, right? But few industries are actually viral. We just doubled the number of new customers per month using FB ads in the first two months of scaling it out, and we'll scale much further over the next 3.
Anyone who works in start-up growth will tell you the same things I am.
1% of products have natural virality and will be found on their own. The other 99% of products and services in existence, no matter the quality, needs to be promoted so people can find them and use them.
Say you make an app that helps plumbers do their job well. If every plumber used it, plumber productivity would go up 50%, making life easier for all. It cost you years of your time and lots of money to make this great app, and you need a lot of plumbers to buy it to afford to continue working on it.
There's a big plumber app on the market already, but yours is way better.
How do you get plumbers to hear about your product?
1) The press? Uninterested. Plumber magazines or sites? Very low traffic - no way to scale.
2) Call or knock on doors of every plumber near you? If everyone did this, the spam would be unreal. Also inefficient and not scalable.
3) Referrals? You get some, but most plumbers aren't chomping at the bit to help their competitors. And because you started with so few, referrals are a snails pace and by no means exponential.
4) Organic postings and SEO? The big plumber app is way ahead of you. And 100 other worse apps clog up the listings. No one sees your posts.
See the problem? Without ads, you can't grow many many categories of genuinely valuable products. Even if no one else is advertising, you can't really grow without them.
This is barely a hypothetical by the way. I've worked with a dozen companies with similar situations.
Here's a real life example:
I was just hired to scale marketing for a particular app. This app currently has over 100 real reviews online, averaging 4.9 stars out of 5. Retention is nuts - 98% of people who ever started using the product (which has a monthly fee) are still using it. The company is three years old.
Perfect to take off, right? But few industries are actually viral. We just doubled the number of new customers per month using FB ads in the first two months of scaling it out, and we'll scale much further over the next 3.
Anyone who works in start-up growth will tell you the same things I am.
This discussion always makes me think of one of my favorite NewRadio scenes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhrnMbhMgmw
It makes a really important point, though: where do you draw the line at what is considered "advertising"? It's a pervasive part of humanity.
> Real world advertising is not about informing, it's about convincing.
That's life, though, isn't it? Me convincing my employer I'm the best person for the job. Convincing my wife I'm the best choice for a husband. Ultimately, everything becomes a sort of "advertisement". It's a very slippery slope.
It's even more interesting that this article even says:
> When I say "advertising", I use this term somewhat loosely...
Which is a problem when you want to make bold claims like "Advertising as cancer".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhrnMbhMgmw
It makes a really important point, though: where do you draw the line at what is considered "advertising"? It's a pervasive part of humanity.
> Real world advertising is not about informing, it's about convincing.
That's life, though, isn't it? Me convincing my employer I'm the best person for the job. Convincing my wife I'm the best choice for a husband. Ultimately, everything becomes a sort of "advertisement". It's a very slippery slope.
It's even more interesting that this article even says:
> When I say "advertising", I use this term somewhat loosely...
Which is a problem when you want to make bold claims like "Advertising as cancer".
Anyone know the old Bill Hicks joke? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Mn2NbjlqU I think advertising is part of the human condition. Once people want something, they tend to change how they relate the facts to better fit their self interest. I see this as an evolution-created short cut. So, while it is valuable to recognize it, demonizing it may not turn out to be that useful. Instead, if we take that advertising is as inevitable a phenomena as language, we can try to avoid its pitfalls as consumers and producers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
> Edward Louis Bernays ... was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".
> Of his many books, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928) gained special attention as early efforts to define and theorize the field of public relations. Citing works of writers such as Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred Trotter, Walter Lippmann, and his own double uncle Sigmund Freud, he described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct—and outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desirable ways.
> Edward Louis Bernays ... was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".
> Of his many books, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928) gained special attention as early efforts to define and theorize the field of public relations. Citing works of writers such as Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred Trotter, Walter Lippmann, and his own double uncle Sigmund Freud, he described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct—and outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desirable ways.
I'd like to see solutions offered, that aren't just of the "do things that are against your own self interest" variety. Anything that requires you do something that individually hurts yourself in a tangible, measurable way, while not giving you benefit in a tangible, measurable way, falls under this. For example, if you boycott, you notice the impact on yourself because it is undiluted, but almost never will you notice the impact of your actions because it will be spread among everyone.
So here's a radical suggestion. Legislation that says: any web site or app that shows ads should offer an option to view the site without ads, by paying for access, and that is priced reasonably (approximately equal revenue as ads) and with options for "a la carte" vs. bundling. Any provider of ads (adSense, etc) has to provide this service as well.
It's complex legislation, I'm sure, and tricky to get right. But it's better than tilting at windmills, as this article leaves me feeling it is doing.
So here's a radical suggestion. Legislation that says: any web site or app that shows ads should offer an option to view the site without ads, by paying for access, and that is priced reasonably (approximately equal revenue as ads) and with options for "a la carte" vs. bundling. Any provider of ads (adSense, etc) has to provide this service as well.
It's complex legislation, I'm sure, and tricky to get right. But it's better than tilting at windmills, as this article leaves me feeling it is doing.
There's good advertising and bad advertising. Calling all advertising "cancer" is ludicrous.
My YouTube subscription feed is full of stuff that is some form of advertising - music instrument retailers demonstrating new products, advertorial content from tool manufacturers, tutorials from software companies and so on. It's all paid for out of the marketing budget, it's all intended to sell more product, but it's also a useful service to me as a consumer.
Back in the day, I bought computer and music magazines in large part because of the advertising. It's how I kept up to date with the industry, it's how I learned about new products that weren't necessarily available in my town and it's how I found out the market price for products.
How do consumers find out about new products without some form of advertising? How do manufacturers find a market without some form of advertising?
My YouTube subscription feed is full of stuff that is some form of advertising - music instrument retailers demonstrating new products, advertorial content from tool manufacturers, tutorials from software companies and so on. It's all paid for out of the marketing budget, it's all intended to sell more product, but it's also a useful service to me as a consumer.
Back in the day, I bought computer and music magazines in large part because of the advertising. It's how I kept up to date with the industry, it's how I learned about new products that weren't necessarily available in my town and it's how I found out the market price for products.
How do consumers find out about new products without some form of advertising? How do manufacturers find a market without some form of advertising?
Anyone else find the user of 'cancer' in these terms to be frustrating? Having had to experience the pain of people I care about having cancer, it immediately just makes me feel like shit. I guess maybe I'm just sensitive...
No its not. I had to move quickly last week. Needed to find someone who could take some stuff. Remembers the 1800gotjunk commercials. They fixed my problem. I guess I could have used google but without ads google wouldn't exist so...
I live in a small town in southeast Alaska, and we are exposed to much less advertising than people in more densely populated parts of the US. We have no billboards, we don't have any large box stores, and we don't have cable TV in our house. When we travel, my 8yo is fascinated by all the advertising around us. He finds a lot of it funny because he hasn't been overexposed to all the standard tricks that advertisers pull.
But, he is already deeply frustrated by the intrusiveness of online ads. He is old enough and informed enough to be aware that he's being manipulated, but not old enough yet to consistently spot the manipulation that online advertisers use on his own.
A little advertising is a good thing. Inundation is not a good thing, and we are far past the inundation stage.
But, he is already deeply frustrated by the intrusiveness of online ads. He is old enough and informed enough to be aware that he's being manipulated, but not old enough yet to consistently spot the manipulation that online advertisers use on his own.
A little advertising is a good thing. Inundation is not a good thing, and we are far past the inundation stage.
I feel this is a new trend among people.
* I don't like something. * Why do people do it? It is not even effective. * It should be outlawed.
If you and a bunch of other people like you think advertising is a waste of money, what is preventing you from starting your own company that does not use advertising? I promise you the government will not come and force you to buy commercial time or Facebook ads.
* I don't like something. * Why do people do it? It is not even effective. * It should be outlawed.
If you and a bunch of other people like you think advertising is a waste of money, what is preventing you from starting your own company that does not use advertising? I promise you the government will not come and force you to buy commercial time or Facebook ads.
Targeted Instagram ads have been very useful to me recently. I just moved apartments, and the ads have been showcasing products that I wouldn’t have otherwise known about.
The argument can be made that maybe I didn’t need these things in the first place. But I want them, it makes me happy, and these ads have saved me time.
The argument can be made that maybe I didn’t need these things in the first place. But I want them, it makes me happy, and these ads have saved me time.
I really detest the general "hate" of advertising. Don't get me wrong: I'm a zealous ad blocker, largely because advertising can (and does) go over the line of being intrusive. Also I think the dirty secret of ad tech is ad personalization has pretty limited value.
But advertising in general is how people find out about things they might need or want. There might be a bakery 2 miles away you'll really enjoy. How will you find out about it if they don't advertise? Being strictly reliant on word-of-mouth is woefully naive (IMHO).
Take Google search, the user is literally looking for something. Why isn't an ad an appropriate response to someone searching for a search for "ozark jetski for hire"? As long as ads and organic search results are clearly differentiated, IMHO this is totally fine.
Certain behaviours obviously need to be restricted, like I'm a big fan of outright outlawing advertising to children. But advertising in general? In what world is that reasonable?
But advertising in general is how people find out about things they might need or want. There might be a bakery 2 miles away you'll really enjoy. How will you find out about it if they don't advertise? Being strictly reliant on word-of-mouth is woefully naive (IMHO).
Take Google search, the user is literally looking for something. Why isn't an ad an appropriate response to someone searching for a search for "ozark jetski for hire"? As long as ads and organic search results are clearly differentiated, IMHO this is totally fine.
Certain behaviours obviously need to be restricted, like I'm a big fan of outright outlawing advertising to children. But advertising in general? In what world is that reasonable?
I really have a dual view on advertising: as a person I hate being on the receiving end of ads (especially when the ads follow me through my browsing....), on the other hand as an entrepreneur I'm quite happy to have means of advertising my tea subscription service [1]. "Build it and they will come" doesn't quite work. People have to hear about your product somehow.
I don't do much advertising at all for Tomotcha as our churn is low and I am quite content with the number of subscribers right now. But from time to time we send a tea to an "influencer" or run an adword campaign. It helps.
[1] When I mention my tea subscription service (https://tomotcha.com) right here on HN, does it count as advertisement? It should, because it is, thankfully HN as a community of entrepreneurs is rather forgiving about self-promotion. Other communities (some subreddits) can be very hostile towards it...
I don't do much advertising at all for Tomotcha as our churn is low and I am quite content with the number of subscribers right now. But from time to time we send a tea to an "influencer" or run an adword campaign. It helps.
[1] When I mention my tea subscription service (https://tomotcha.com) right here on HN, does it count as advertisement? It should, because it is, thankfully HN as a community of entrepreneurs is rather forgiving about self-promotion. Other communities (some subreddits) can be very hostile towards it...
I prefer to simply say "marketing today is immoral": it is using scientifically proven methods to manipulate us into doing something we would otherwise not be inclined to do.
I don't mind informative advertising: "hey, we are making this thing which can help with this" is ok. But that's a rare breed of ads nowadays. One of the eye-openers for me was when I noticed in my early student (and shaving :)) days how all Nivea shaving products were branded as being for sensitive skin (does your skin turn red if you pull razor over it?): I've simply stopped buying their products. They've scaled back on that, but I didn't "forgive" them their attempt to manipulate me.
As a cancer survivor myself, I don't mind the analogy and term, it just seems to not be explicit enough about what the trouble is with ads today: you have to work backwards to establish parallels from "cancer" to "advertising".
I don't mind informative advertising: "hey, we are making this thing which can help with this" is ok. But that's a rare breed of ads nowadays. One of the eye-openers for me was when I noticed in my early student (and shaving :)) days how all Nivea shaving products were branded as being for sensitive skin (does your skin turn red if you pull razor over it?): I've simply stopped buying their products. They've scaled back on that, but I didn't "forgive" them their attempt to manipulate me.
As a cancer survivor myself, I don't mind the analogy and term, it just seems to not be explicit enough about what the trouble is with ads today: you have to work backwards to establish parallels from "cancer" to "advertising".
This is the first I've learned about things like the "Evercookie," and now I'm wondering if there's a U.S. Attorney out there who would be interested in a CFAA prosecution.
I utterly fail to see how it could be the case that website scraping arguably violates the CFAA (though I have my doubts there), but this kind of malware deliberately designed to violate the expressed intent of people to remove data from their own machines, for the purpose of accessing identity information, doesn't.
Interestingly, if you try to download the zip file of the evercookie repo from github, Chrome detects it as malware and blocks it. That makes me rather more confident in the security model of Chrome.
I utterly fail to see how it could be the case that website scraping arguably violates the CFAA (though I have my doubts there), but this kind of malware deliberately designed to violate the expressed intent of people to remove data from their own machines, for the purpose of accessing identity information, doesn't.
Interestingly, if you try to download the zip file of the evercookie repo from github, Chrome detects it as malware and blocks it. That makes me rather more confident in the security model of Chrome.
> "There's really nothing stopping any government from tapping into this total surveillance infrastructure other than lack of will."
Why assume a lack of will at this point? We know they routinely approach companies about collecting the data the company collects. They've clearly demonstrated the will to collect our data regardless of legality. (Does/did this site have a warrant canary?)
At this point I treat all ads as hostile. As much as websites try to make you feel guilty for blocking their ads I feel zero obligation to allow or support their efforts to manipulate me or compromise my privacy and security.
Why assume a lack of will at this point? We know they routinely approach companies about collecting the data the company collects. They've clearly demonstrated the will to collect our data regardless of legality. (Does/did this site have a warrant canary?)
At this point I treat all ads as hostile. As much as websites try to make you feel guilty for blocking their ads I feel zero obligation to allow or support their efforts to manipulate me or compromise my privacy and security.
Advertising is as much of a cancer as any form of communication.
What's happening is that the barrier of entry - better yet let's use the industry terms: the cost reach of advertising campaigns is low thanks to the internet that drove the cost of distribution of information close to 0.
So you're just seeing what was once a privileged tool open to the masses - and it's bad. Anyone can have access to it with a credit card.
Now just because there's a lot of bad advertising, probably the great majority of it, doesn't mean it's a cancer. Else everything that's abused in a bad way is a cancer.
What's happening is that the barrier of entry - better yet let's use the industry terms: the cost reach of advertising campaigns is low thanks to the internet that drove the cost of distribution of information close to 0.
So you're just seeing what was once a privileged tool open to the masses - and it's bad. Anyone can have access to it with a credit card.
Now just because there's a lot of bad advertising, probably the great majority of it, doesn't mean it's a cancer. Else everything that's abused in a bad way is a cancer.
I’ve always wondered about the hundreds of millions spent on election (mainly TV) advertising in the U.S.
Is all that money paid for airtime an indirect subsidy or transfer of wealth to those who own media companies?
Is all that money paid for airtime an indirect subsidy or transfer of wealth to those who own media companies?
How much free reign does anyone have when it comes to advertisement? I feel that the biggest issue is not only the volume / spam of advertisement, but how much misinformation it projects.
If the quantity of advertisement can be curbed in such a way that corporates are more conscious of how much space they have on television with advertisements (time limiting law), as well as what message they can convey, this starts discouraging and treating in-your-face advertisement less of a prioritiezed form of pitching a product.
If the quantity of advertisement can be curbed in such a way that corporates are more conscious of how much space they have on television with advertisements (time limiting law), as well as what message they can convey, this starts discouraging and treating in-your-face advertisement less of a prioritiezed form of pitching a product.
While I understand both the purpose (cultivate desire, entice, inform)
and the necessity (forward movement, economy, business) of advertising, I'd still like to get about my life without it. Unhindered by it.
The noise to signal ratio of the modern Internet is such that I, as a technical person, someone that finds it preferable to read instead of listen or watch; I still find myself on Youtube 99% of the time. Almost all of my web browsing is now Youtube. AND I HATE IT.
The noise to signal ratio of the modern Internet is such that I, as a technical person, someone that finds it preferable to read instead of listen or watch; I still find myself on Youtube 99% of the time. Almost all of my web browsing is now Youtube. AND I HATE IT.
For example, everybody on the planet is now familiar with soft drinks. If anybody has never tasted Coke, it's not by accident. But Coke's ad budget is enormous. If all soft drink companies stopped advertising tomorrow, society would not be worse off. And we'd have billions of dollars [1] to spend on something useful.
Like the author, I won't work on ad tech. I don't like manipulation and I don't like waste, and most advertising is both.
[1] e.g., https://notesmatic.com/pepsico-advertising-and-marketing-bud... https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/081315/look-co...