Have you ever found yourself humming a jingle from a company whose product you have no interest in, and will never have interest in? I can recite the entire Bu

Have you ever found yourself humming a jingle from a company whose product you have no interest in, and will never have interest in? I can recite the entire Burger King “Whopper song” and I will never step foot inside a Burger King for as long as I live. I can hum every major insurance carrier’s jingle and tell you the characters they commonly use in their ads. I’ve been quoted by all of them and have the best deal for me. I can tell you the phone number for the local payday lender and I’ll never take a payday loan. Yet all of these occupy space in my brain through no choice of my own. To me, the issue is that advertising is, from the consumer perspective, pushed on me rather than sought out. You can see from the asymmetry of that power dynamic that advertising is not to the benefit of the consumer. Even the order in which you phrased your comment, “connecting products to potential consumers”, is exactly right, and reflective of the problem. You phrase it as if the product is a living entity enamored with the idea of being brought home by a loving consumer; the reality is the consumer is the human, and the consumer should be driving the interaction. In a consumer-centric universe, the consumer could seek out solutions to their problems and find products. Instead, advertising prioritizes the need of products (and the companies who sell them) to be connected to consumers, over the humans who apologists like you attempt to claim the system is benefiting.