Yeah, I actually went to school for "strategic communication" which was in large part advertising/marketing/PR. I originally had this very naive perspective that these sorts of communication are important and valuable. Which is still true (we all engage in -some- form of self-promotion, even if only in how we choose to present ourselves to others), but with massive asterisks.

In my ideal, advertising and marketing are about really understanding what the other party needs and finding a truly mutually beneficial agreement that actually generates value through exchange (A has X but values Y more highly, B has Y but values X more highly, simply by the act of exchange, value is generated).

I was even pro-tracking at one point because the more you know about people, the better you can understand their needs so the better you can offer them something they'll value. In the abstract, I still think there's something here. But it has to be done responsibly and with a user-before-profit mindset.

By contrast, ad companies have time and again proven themselves irresponsible with this information, e.g. selling it to shady groups.

> I started to run my own ventures and realised advertising is essential

There are ethical ways to go about it. In certain contexts, what people think of as advertising is really just information. It's totally fine to inform people when they ask for it.

When people open a store app, it's because they want to see products. There's no ethical conflict when the store app does what people want it to do. What's unethical is the constant product spam when people are trying to do anything else.