> It is hard to imagine a world without ads - many sites and services would disappear.
Don't you see the problem with that statement? Ads are profitable, and we are paying for them, indirectly, through buying products and services. Adtech takes a chunk of that profit. Therefore, we pay more than we should!
So you are paying more than you should for a loaf of bread because your local shop is making a profit? because if you went to the factory you could buy the same loaf for less? Of course you could make the bread yourself for even less because the factory is making a profit, and grow the wheat yourself for even less because the farmer is making a profit.
You are not 'paying more than you should'. Not least because there is no price you 'should' be paying. Further I'm not sure how you imagine this working? The retailer gets to decide prices or not? They get to decide if they advertise or not? The advertiser's have competition? The retailers? Retailers are presumably choosing to advertise because they think it's worth it, thus it is? You are free to choose to buy those products, that will feed into their decision whether and how to advertise.
That's a fallacy like the broken window fallacy.
In no way is the consumer helped here, in the end.
To make things worse, the consumer is nudged into buying more stuff and thus contributing to global overconsumption.
The point of ads is generally to tempt you to make purchases where the alternative is having nothing. So the comparison I think is more like grocery stores putting junk food right in the checkout to try and have you buy some on impulse?
Are you equating the shopkeeper across the street earning 15 an hour to sell me my loaf of bread to the advertisement industrial complex?