Please, no. Advertising is like drugs: There‘s always a demand, and if it‘s not satisfied legally and transparently, it will find a way through other means.
I already can’t trust most influencers or any other "independent" reviewers.
Pushing ad dollars into prohibition will make the problem much worse than it already is.
Maybe I am out of touch with reality but it seems to me that there is mostly a demand, or maybe better a desire, to advertise something while I do not think that there is the same demand or desire to consume those advertisements. But all kind of media will happily take some of those advertising dollars and force the ads onto us, whether online, on paper, on TV, or billboards. And people don't complain because they get stuff cheaper or even for free, or so they think.
That would be an utopia indeed. Advertising suffers from a massive conflict of interest. People would be much better served by independent third parties evaluating products and publishing the results. We just gotta make sure they aren't corrupted.
Here in Germany we have Stiftung Warentest [1] and it is financed by selling their reports as magazines and online. They also receive some government support from the consumer protection ministry. Not sure if there are any competitors, Stiftung Warentest is certainly by far the most well known one.
Yes, I'm aware of Which? -- my parents used to get it when I was growing up.
It was only ever able to cover a tiny part of the market for a few selected things, though. (And of course only a small minority of people would ever see it.)
