I hate advertising so much. I would ban it immediately if allowed. It makes society so much worse in every possible measure.
Also at first e.g. people having loud conversations in public or on the train and not having a clue what they are saying meant they were much less distracting.
Gutenberg opened a huge can of worms. Day 1 bibles, day 2 pamphlets, and sooner than you know it, there's a whole internet popping cookies all over.
No, I don't like it much either, and maybe we should charge advertisers high fees for the privilege of messing with the collective mind, which is in none too good shape from all their ministrations. Perhaps that would dial it down.
Obviously some people would disagree, but therein lies the problem; if one group of people wants to have professional sports and saturate society with ads, and the other group doesn't want to be saturated with ads, then society is saturated with ads. It's the same as the noisy neighbor problem; if one neighbor is noisy, and the other is quiet, life is perfect for the noisy neighbor and hell for the quiet neighbor.
I guess it's the same as brand worship, something else that doesn't resonate with me. I've bought good products from particular brands, but the brand doesn't in itself matter to me at all, only the particular product I'm interested in.