I am certainly no fan of current advertising - it is fundamentally backwards from what is useful - the customer wants information on what would fufill their needs and desires and should shape the provider. Beyond sinple "this exists" advertising tries to shape their desire to the product. Unfortunately there isn't exactly even a good theory for a better information propagation mechanism for resource allocation let alone one in practice.

I wouldn't go so far to go zero sum with ad tech vs society. To be a smartass bathing the worls in nuclear fire would be bad for adtech and bad for society. Not to mention society is horrifyingly vague and exploitable. You can call the downfall of the Kim Jonh dynasty, the military, and the rise of a free and democratic North Korea/unified Korea the a destruction of a society.

Personally I suspect that critical analysis by default isn't used period and the issues of influencers far predate ad tech. One bit of accidental good they can engage in is building skepticism - a cure all claim is greeted with more incredulity today than in the old west.