Advertising is a strange beast. An emphasis on taking media theory seriously would do us a lot of good. I actually think the internet has led to more awareness of the issue but the decades prior gave us a dismal trajectory. Whether advertising itself is inherently bad for us is one thing. It's abstract side effects as a are another, and that is what we are concerned with here, but we have to first accept the the realities of the course we have been on in order to correct it.
Media, interface of advertising, is often thought of as frivolous. This is the same interface through which religion has enraptured it's audience for all the centuries. We can approach the issues in a rational way. Branding and advertising uses the same concepts in a different context and form. How branding and advertising affect us is a messier discussion than whether it does or not. We have accepted a life experience (emotions, desires, meanings) overwhelmingly defined by advertising. As such, our livelihoods are entangled with it and almost all of us depend on advertising to make a living. Maybe we should consider whether we are incentivized to be complacent about this core problem in the same way an individual living in an extremist religious society is incentivized to conform. I'm not sure.