It's even more wasteful if you look at it at a societal level. There's an incredible amount of economic output that's devoted to advertising, so much so that th

It's even more wasteful if you look at it at a societal level. There's an incredible amount of economic output that's devoted to advertising, so much so that there are large secondary industries (broadcast television, radio, social media, etc.) built around being advertisement delivery vehicles. Yet all of this economic activity is going towards something that's a net negative to society - an enormous amount of distracting material meant to manipulate a persons actions so that they're more beneficial for a company, and often less beneficial for themselves. Advertising isn't alone in this. It seems like parasitic industries take up a large and growing part of our economic output.