"Consider if there were no advertising; the result would likely be that A and B would both lose because nobody would know they exist." This may have been true

"Consider if there were no advertising; the result would likely be that A and B would both lose because nobody would know they exist." This may have been true in the past, but this is 2010... I constantly find out about products (and other things, and people, etc) that I didn't know existed, through other means than advertisements. Without paying for it, in fact; people put reviews about ANYTHING online nowadays.