It is difficult to overstate how important advertising is in every economy.
People need to have the capacity to find things.
Today we have the internet, and search engines.
If people want something, they can look.
In this way, all parties consent, otherwise advertisements are harassment.
ABSOLUTELY this.
Advertisements use MY bandwidth, MY compute resources, MY time, MY space, to harass me by showing me things I have zero interest in, all the while interrupting what I'm doing, distracting me, and then having the gall to tell me "but think of the poor publishers!!".
They have caused the appearance of an industry that's a pox on all ("influencers") who behave like society owes them the space, time, attention and deference that for whatever reason they think they need.
And for a cherry on top, it makes everything more expensive because WE pay for all of it.
Thinking about advertiser bytes on my ethernet cables, makes me feel, compromised. I did not consent. It must end.
There's a previous step: People need to know that there is such a thing to find.
Some advertising (I'll call it "base" advertising, though there may be a better term) is just information. "Hey, everybody, there's this new thing called a mobile phone!" "Hey, everybody, there's this new disease called AIDS that you really had better alter your behavior to avoid, because it's deadly."
There's a second kind, which I will call "us" advertising: "Hey, everybody, we have the best mobile phones! Available now at WalMart!"
We don't need the second kind, at all. I'm not sure, but I suspect the first kind is at least somewhat useful.
(You can still probably call it harassment, though. Useful, but still harassment.)
IMO, finding things, also covers not being aware it existed.
Like you're on amazon searching for something, and they suggest something you might also like, they don't know if you knew about it already. That's fine, still both parties consenting.
I wish there was a low friction microtransaction for services which seems to be the main (only?) thing that advertisement allows that would other wise not exist. The technology exists to do this so banning advertisements does not appear to be a net negative to me. Before the pandemic many food deliver services were not viable, now they are (at least where I live), we could have done that without a pandemic but it required something big to force through the change. I see banning certain kinds of ads as one of those big changes but without the pandemic, maybe it'll change habits enough to enable microtransactions.
What you wanted to say is how influential it is, not important, not the same things, how hugely distorts the economy, distorts it on a grand scale! Not important, it is hugely harmful for the economy and societies, hugely!
Probably you'd mean the promotional aspect, the getting informed of a new product kind of thing which was useful if it was not a misleading shameless lie into the face of the society by willful misinformation and forceful push of unwanted matters!