Pavements don't force you to walk on them, but I'd bet you tend not to stray off them. Pathways through the park don't force you to stay on them, but most people tend to stick to them.
By escalating the bar that advertising needs to reach to influence agents to "force", you're proposing a binary relation where there is a continuum. I think it's disingenuous.
> They are categorically not just about informing people.
> And saying you received value from ad-supported stuff strikes me as very backwards. You still pay, but you pay through being manipulated into buying stuff you don't need.
This was the ancestor comment I was responding about. This person is suggesting that an advertiser can make you buy things you wouldn't otherwise want. My point is that it isn't true - you have to want the product at some level to be interested. If you'd read my comment you'd realise that I agree that they can influence your decision, but not if you weren't at least mildly interested in the product in the first place.
They just need to get to your not so gone weaknesses.
It's not force, but almost nobody will ask for the thing behind the counter. It's the effect that matters.
The extent of the grey area differs for each individual.
None of these decisions are forced by the advertiser, and "influence" as a concept is pretty plain on the face of it. The psychological hacks that advertisers use are mainly restricted to trying to make you under-price or over-value a product in your head, or in the case of late-night shopping channels, to get you to impulse-buy things (which I would consider to be fairly exploitative but is in the minority in terms of advertisers). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is a good book on the subject.
> When I rip on the agency of consumers please consider that with any small amount of agency they would search for the best product to suit their needs and advertising would be worthless.
I think you're conflating agency and rationality here. A rational agent would indeed shop around, but any old agent can choose to buy or not buy something based on whether they think it has value to them.