You put your finger on the pulse of it. Ads give little net positive to society in general, because their sole value add is to inform. But with information acquisition cost drastically reduced due to good search engines, the value add becomes nil. So advertisers create company value by other modes. This is not a net good.
But as the article points out, we acclimate to stimulus, so any ad that's welcomed and successful will lose engagement over time. Which is why we get either very creative compelling advertising or advertising that attempts to trick us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jYMQx2RuVs
Relevant (and somewhat humorously self-aware) take on the matter from youtube channel Wisecrack-which is a channel that likes to look at the deeply classically philosophical aspects of how we react and inform ourselves through the lens of modern media.
But as the article points out, we acclimate to stimulus, so any ad that's welcomed and successful will lose engagement over time. Which is why we get either very creative compelling advertising or advertising that attempts to trick us.
The entire thing is fundamentally broken, of course, and nobody seems to have a monetization strategy beyond subscriptions or the perpetual cat and mouse game of blockers, blocker-blockers, blocker-blocker-blockers and so on.
In an industry full of innovation the monetization aspect is stuck in the newspaper model created 150 years ago.