Advertising is a gross inefficiency on the economy. To achieve market balance you need to make sure consumers are aware of your product - back in the day this was rather difficult since there was no central repository of all knowledge. Now that we've got the internet though... this is unnecessary to achieve a healthy level of company growth.
However, if you want to cannibalize an industry's profit margins to squeeze in front of your competitors advertising in many forms will remain productive. I think we almost need a cartel-like system that says "Okay video card manufactures - enough with the advertising... nobody impulse buys video cards so each sale you gain through advertising is just coming from one of the other company's pockets (or your own)."
If we actually had powerful consumer-laborers (imagine if employers applied to you! Or there was an central labor marketplace and the market cleared! What a foreign world.) companies would have no money left over for ads as they were too busy competing on product quality with low margins.
However, if you want to cannibalize an industry's profit margins to squeeze in front of your competitors advertising in many forms will remain productive. I think we almost need a cartel-like system that says "Okay video card manufactures - enough with the advertising... nobody impulse buys video cards so each sale you gain through advertising is just coming from one of the other company's pockets (or your own)."