The cyclical rage against “advertising” - whether it’s defacing billboards, playing AdBuster games or this sort of discussion - is misplaced in that advertising is only a small part of consumer product marketing, and it isn’t even the important part.
The marketing industry knows this - has for many decades - and a good part of a major ad campaign is to give consumers a target to “hate” - vent feelings from mild rejection to outright torch mob violence - and deflect attention from the rest of the marketing effort. Ads are crafted as much to be something to laugh at (in the dismissive sense) and take heat from the market audience as they are to serve any of the tired old verities about informing, amusing, advising, notifying.
Most people are right when they say “advertising never makes me buy anything” - but not for the reasons they think they’re right. Being “anti-advertising” is somewhere between useless and wearing a KICK ME sign for the marketing industry. You might as well be a pilot trying to shoot every piece of chaff out of the sky. (While the real target slips past, possibly without ever being noticed.)