It’s easy to dismiss advertising as just a profit engine for ad platforms, but that’s only part of the picture. At its best, advertising plays a meaningful role in solution and product discovery, especially for new or niche offerings that users wouldn’t encounter otherwise. It also promotes fairer market competition by giving smaller players a shot at visibility, and by making alternatives accessible to customers, without relying solely on monopolistic platforms or the randomness of word-of-mouth.
That said, today’s ad ecosystem is far from ideal - often opaque, invasive, and manipulative. Still, the underlying idea of advertising has real value. Fair advertising is a hard problem, and while reform is overdue, banning it outright would likely create even bigger ones.
It's only when some actors start advertising that the others must as well, so they don't fall behind. And so billions of dollars are spent that could have gone to making better products.
It's basically the prisoner's dilemma at scale.
Realistically: no, you can’t stop big companies from advertising. Just having multiple shops bearing your logo gives you a level of brand recognition that’s hard to beat. Even if no one advertised, they’d still find ways to dominate the conversation and outshine competitors through sheer presence. You’re right that it becomes a kind of arms race, but in practice, trying to "opt out" often means falling behind.