> Targeted advertising allows some businesses to exist that otherwise would not exist.

That's true, but in the argument, it carries the implicit assumption that those businesses existing is a good thing. But this is often not the case. Plenty of businesses exist only because they can dupe enough people with hyper-targeted ads.

More importantly, though, advertising is an ecosystem. Companies buying ads are only part of the money flow. The more problematic part are the companies showing those ads. There you can find many[0] examples of companies that should not exist, and yet they do, because there's money in showing ads. Those companies always have some kind of bait to lure viewers onto their sites, where they'll be subject to ads. Because of the ad money, those sites displace legitimate efforts that try to provide actual value in the same space the ad-powered sites just use as their bait.

It's a long topic, and this is just one small aspect of it.

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[0] - In my personal opinion, it's vast majority of sites displaying ads.