I would like to see this argument based on data as opposed to your feelings. There are many years of argument about the effectivity of advertisment, with a ton of data. One can usually argue that ads are not worth the price... it's very hard to find data that they are completely ineffective. They may be less effective due to ab blocking tech but they are still able to influence people.
My parallel is that - horses are an ok way to propel a car - it works, but a gasoline engine is way, way better and convenient. Ads are the horses here
It is just about how you communicate with the buyer. For a mass market good, smarter people simply go to Alibaba.com and press ctrl+f these days, and about anything non-commodity people already know everything from subject matter websites.
Even on Alibaba itself, front page spots, and top line of search results are usually not human curated, and they cost surprisingly cheap.
Most traders there deject them outright. In consumer goods, they don't shy away to simply send few samples to paid reviewers (ones who do that openly) like Linus, NR, etc, and write honest, first hand articles about their own products in tech blogs.
