The heart of your stance is apparently that pernicious socially harmful mechanisms are okay as long as they finance something useful. Correct?

Or is it that you don’t see the harms of advertising?

Advertising is a wasteful arms race. Bob may not want to spend money advertising his business, but if Mallory (his competitor) spends money on ads, then Bob is forced to spend money on ads to recover marketshare loss due to Mallory’s ads.