Even if you can be successful without advertising, it seems a bit silly to be against it. If you know that by investing 100000$ in advertising, you can earn another 1000000$ in revenue, why would you not do it? Just because it loses you points in the indie scene?

I used to be all negative about advertising, but I changed my attitude since I realized that nature itself relies heavily on advertising. A beautiful flower is advertising, too. Even a flower has to announce "I am here" with colors and odors. Maybe in some cases a "social recommendation mechanism" is also at work (like the bees who inform other bees about food sources), but without such a mechanism, how are your clients going to discover you?