I think you are a bit too general. Advertising has its place. It is not always negative. If You have a new product, like a new bike that helps with backpain (just as an example). Most of your targetgroup probably has already a bike and isn’t looking for an improvement because their current bike is good enough. They don’t even know there could be a more fitting bike for them. You do advertising not only to maximize You revenue but also to let people know about your new product and what it does better than the other bikes. Sure it’s not always that way and marketing gets abused like hell… But there are non nefarious reasons to advertise.

But yeah… When big companies do it, it’s usually crap to manipulate. One of the main reasons i switched from design (which is often just marketing) to programming.