I don't think that is true at all. Without advertising you would just have the information elsewhere. Let's take an example similar to your girlfriend's case: e

I don't think that is true at all. Without advertising you would just have the information elsewhere. Let's take an example similar to your girlfriend's case: entertainment. In Paris you have plenty of events, of all kinds. And that did not start with the internet. And promoters can be very small and have a marketing budget of around 0. Now how did they get people without advertising? You had a collaborative newspaper every week showing all the events with a small comment. Everyone interested in going out had access to it, either because they bought it or read it at school/work/library/press stand. You also have informative stands for small theaters in the metro. No advertising does not mean no information. At last, the majority of ads budget is taken by huge corporations with famous products, like Unilever, and really don't bring anything to society, not even information.