The problem with ads (and most of marketing too) is also that it turns into an arms race at scale and often at the expense of product quality.

Imagine two cities; one allows billboards and transit ads, one doesn't. Everything else being equal, which product wins in the ad-city? Usually the product with the ad dollars, unless there is a substantial difference in quality / price.

Which product wins in the non-ad city? The one that is better or cheaper.

The insidious thing is that brandable food products have to be processed in order to be unique. Anyone can grow an apple, but only Coca-Cola can make Vanilla Coke. So not only are we burning away attention / psyche with all these ads, we're also naturally incentivized to activities that aren't good for us or the planet.

If I had my way I'd ban it all. No advertising / marketing other than product demos and maybe search results[0]. There's too many downsides.

[0] Search is a special case because people are working to find a solution to their problem. For example, you may snore at night and search "nighttime snore mouthpiece" not knowing that there are other solutions like devices that detect snoring and automatically adjust your pillow. So in the search case the incentives are much more likely to be aligned.