When it comes to something like buying a car, I don't want to be advertised to since the manufacturer of that product 1) isn't a part of my community and 2) isn't supported by the people in my area.
I can absolutely think of cases where I would have liked to know what services are available for specific products, like chair making, or a project I have in mind, rather than having to ask around to figure out who even does it in my area. Obviously, I would still have to do some research to figure out if the person advertising is any good, but the fact that a small business has a budget for advertising is a very positive indicator that they are at least professional enough to have some revenue.
Advertising, when it relates to something a small business can exist within, reduces the amount of time and effort I have to put in to seeing how many competitors are in that space. It's not something that I'm thrilled about, but it does have benefit within certain circumstance.
We had this, it was called phone books. And I guess a phone book is technically advertising, but there's clearly a difference between info and manipulation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_pages
I don't mind advertising whenever I am actively looking for something.
What I have problems with is seeing ads when I don't want to see them.
I cannot recall one single advertisement I ever saw in my life, other than some institutional/non-profit ads, which remotely fits that idyllic description. So it's really a moot point. "What if advertising were just calm factual information", well but it's not! It's definitely not! It's psychological warfare of moderate-to-high intensity. So what use is pretending it's something it's not? It's very disingenuous to pretend it can ever be "gentle, honest, and educational" (lol)
I also don't see how advertising is responsible for chip mass-production and Moore's law.