That sounds like what you're arguing. I agree the trend toward advertisers making their own destinations is interesting. From what I've seen though, these destinations then need to be promoted via paid advertising to get eyeballs on them.
Heck, even a lot of "publishers" these days are buying advertising to drive audience.
Anyone selling stuff looks for ways to exchange money for distribution of information about their products.
I've seeing big brands burning a lot of cash to get ridiculous any way you count it, be it eyeballs or what. But they'd still do it, just because it's part of their "budget". Even if it doesn't work, no one is really that accountable. They're doing what they're told and in reality no one knows what'll stick so it's hard to point fingers.
That will continue for a while, but some people ARE seeing the writing on the wall, and even advertising agencies that are profiting from the current situation can see it. That's what I felt, and I could see the work I did getting less and less relevant.
The move I'm seeing is not just towards brands realizing they're running a lot of fuel to move at a slow speed, but also towards agencies becoming more "studios" than "agencies" (an irony in itself considering it's the opposite of what started happening 8 or so years ago), and building things FOR and WITH clients rather than some on-off forgettable new shitty online campaign or "viral" crap no one cares about.
A great site or application for, say, booking online flights does wonders towards a customer's perception of a flight carrier. It makes sense for Delta or Jetblue or anyone to create the best damn flight checkin/booking/etc app so people want to use it. So instead of spending millions in yet another online campaign, they can spend a portion of that creating a damn good app that will be with them for a while. Same applies to so many other businesses.
That's the kind of move I'm seeing, at least in the kind of work I do. Advertising won't die, banners won't die, but they'll be the loan sharks of the web.
Of course this move also creates a problem, like newspapers that insist on creating their own useless apps. But that's just to prove not everything fits into this model, and each business or brand will have to find its own way to actually serving their customer better.
Apple's move towards blocking ads may help fasten it, but it's not about them. It's something that's bigger and already in motion.
Big brands are starting to understand that what they want is not to force someone into seeing their name, but to create something that people actually want to use. Be it an application, be it a service. And not force "INSTALL OUR APP!" into someone's screen. For a good example, Coke's new app that allows you to customize the drink you can get from their machine. Or Mountain Dew's fidelity program tracking app. Baby steps, but it's actually something useful. Regardless of what you think of soda or soda drinkers, those are a actual services that some people would find convenient, and would help tie them to the brand.
Traditional advertising is a one-way, in-your-face kind of deal, and it works for brand awareness, especially for new consumers (kids). But with the technology we have today, it makes little sense to move that online. We have learned to ignore it. Sure, the internet had to do it, and it helped it grow. But now people are tired. We grew used to it. Most brands are now understanding that there's more they can do with the medium, and finding their way out of that death spiral.
I've worked in advertising for ~17 years, nearly my whole career. Finally got out of it and couldn't be happier. Work was fine and my coworkers were great people (there ARE good advertising agencies out there). But it was easy to see it was a dead-end street.