Personalized ads are better at convincing you personally, so they are worse for you than random ads, or even than content-based ads. Additionally, they depend on building a detailed profile of you, which most people are fundamentally uncomfortable with when they are aware of.
I did not know that such software existed.
The ad was good for me and for the seller.
Trade is not a zero sum game.
The fact that advertising sometimes actually helps in discovering a product you actually needed is a coincidence. The main point of advertising is to convince people to prefer a product for reasons other than cost/benefit.
Even in your case - did you see the ad and immediately bought the product? Or did you see the ad and then actually went and looked for reviews, competitors, tried it out yourself etc? If you did the former, you almost certainly got scammed at least to some extent. If you did the latter, then it's not the ad that convinced you, it's the reviews/personal trial/price comparison. The ad happened to show you the product existed, but the same could have happened from a mention in a comment or anything else. The ad was not designed to show the product exists, it was designed to convince you it has certain characteristics that the product may or may not actually have.
Ads are not trying to inform. They virtually universally make claims that are pushed as far as possible without breaking false advertising laws. Ads never ever state limitations, for example - even though any honest information would.
This is false. If you've ever run ads before, the best way to get people to convert is to offer a higher cost/benefit than competitors.
How do you think Uber grew from 0 to a 90B market cap? Magical emotional trickery? No.
Uber advertised cheaper, faster, and more convenient rides. The definition of a better cost/benefit. Hence they grew fast. I could list a million examples.
There is no reason to assume that the negative effects outweigh the positive effects.
There are some forms of advertisement which are maybe bad.
I think we would be worse off if all advertising were banned.
I also used to 'boost' my high school senior posts to other 16/17/18 year olds in whatever area they're from. Not only did that work as advertising for me, all of the likes that the images got from that probably really boosted the kid's self esteem. Within the past year they made it so that I can no longer target people under the age of 18 by area.
Most forms of advertising are bad. There are maybe a few which are decent, but there are far better alternatives (such as business directories and non-paid review sites).
If you believe in the free market to any extent, you should be against advertising. The only thing advertising does is to distort the free market - by making market agents be less rational.
Because you had the money to advertise, they wound up exposed to your photos; they liked them and they were able to afford you, so they booked you.
However, the cost of your services necessarily accounts for you spending money on advertising. Someone who doesn't advertise may have had the same quality and style of photography and a better price, but because of your advertising, the couple were tricked out of finding the best vendor. You distorted the wedding photography market in your area, and your customers actually got a worse deal than they maybe could have.
Or, perhaps you are actually the best photographer in your area, and no one else would have come close for that couple. You still lost money because you paid for advertising.
Even worse, someone who is worse than you at photography may come along with a huge advertising budget and become the only visible photographer in the area, scamming both you and the couple from a better deal.
If instead there had been some open local directory of wedding photographers, which may charge some fee for services but otherwise present all phtogorpahers neutrally, the couple would have still found the best deal, and you would have been able to either offer lower costs, or made higher profits.
I think with a little critical thinking you can take your "the only" or "is about" statements and ask yourself if you can think of exceptions. You can, and easily.
Sure, but that would only work locally. I do weddings all across my state. Couples would also have to look through pages and pages of terrible photographers. Those photographers don't have the money to advertise because they're bad at their jobs and don't do it frequently.
Yeah, in some ideal world people would be matched up with whatever product/service is best for them all of the time. We don't live in a perfect world. People won't buy what you're advertising unless they think it's a good fit for them. Because people buy whatever you're selling, that means you can keep advertising, which means the stuff advertised tends to be what people want to buy. Right now that's the best system we have. Any other system right now would probably be like when you search for things on Amazon nowadays, absolutely riddled with cheap Chinese knockoffs.