also one should always be skeptical about the extent they believe they are not influenced by ads. that runs pretty deep. you say you instinctively don't trust it. but when the time comes to buy something, you won't automatically steer yourself towards a product that you have never heard before just because you have not seen an ad for it. having some names in your mind, even them showing up when you do research creates influence.
https://veracitytrustnetwork.com/blog/digital-marketing/uber...
As commenters have already raised, we'd have no Google, Facebook, Twitter (sorry 'X') or many other entities and the products they create without the money spent on advertising. Is this all just happening because people are too scared to look under the curtain and find that it's all just a sham?
We had advertising long before the internet came along, and from my personal memory most of the most aggressive advertising was for things that were either useless (magic snake oil remedies) or actually dangerous (tobacco products), not to mention all the "as seen on TV" junk that was "promoted" on morning television.
Is what we have now is more intrusive? It used to be that you could duck to the toilet during the adds on TV or flip the page in the newspaper or magazine, but now they are taking our cpu cycles, making web pages unreadable and that is not to mention the more intrusive ways of really getting in our heads.
I'd argue that we've always had (even if just the shop keeper recommending a product) and always will have advertising. There have always been products that are not needed or wanted by the majority, and advertising is the way that the producer of that product gets their product sold. I would be nice if there were not so much dodgy practice involved.