I put on plays. Some people would enjoy seeing them. I can only do four or five performances so I can't wait for people to rave to their friends about it.

I put up polite, attractive, informative ads in forums that I think will have people who might come to my shows. Not everyone will; the large majority won't. But some of these are web sites that talk about theater, where my ad spend pays for the site itself to exist.

I recognize that the ads we most notice are nothing like that. But the idea that all ads are automatically a bad thing misses out on the fact that the original purpose of ads, as cited in the article, does still exist. If you waved a magic wand and got rid of ads my theater probably wouldn't exist. No big loss, I suppose, but the world is very slightly poorer for it.

Here's a good that advertising does: letting people know how your product or services address some pressing need.

Things are so far gone at this point I'm perfectly willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater on this one.