They're not just talking about shitty ads, the entirety of the ad industry has infested our world so much that every ad is by definition a shitty one.
The problem with the steelman argument for marketing is that the scenarios people end up defending can be likened to a medieval shop owner putting a sign in fron of their establishment or a customer browsing a shopping aisle of items with packaging that perfectly represents the function of each item. But that argument must inevitably hit reality, where the industry spiraled into insanity and utter corruption of everything it touches. Lies, abuse, manipulation, FOMO, misrepresentation, scams. These are the primary values of that industry today. Maybe it was sane once upon a time, but that was centuries ago. Now they're unstoppable.
We do not need to endure modern marketing to have product discovery. Imagine if we had a universal service that acted as containment for advertising, where anyone could list their good or service, provide a standardized and fairly objective summary of what makes it good (no mind trickery) and post it to be displayed alonside everyone else's, without even favoring the richest with the most ads or the biggest ads. Then you could find as many mousetraps as you could ever need, while the rest of the world would be spared from the concentrated stream of garbage in the form of advertising that it's currently being firehosed with.