Even before influencing behaviour (which is not inherently wrong, by the way. Everyone tries to influence others all the time) the aim of advertising is to make your product or service known, it's to make potential customers know that you exist so that if they need what you sell you at least have a chance that they'll buy it from you. Advertising is an essential part of a market economy.
It's always useful to go back to basics: Let's say I'm a teenager and I want to make some money to buy a new bike by mowing lawns. Will I just sit on my front porch and hope that my neighbours will read my mind? Of course not, I'll advertise by knocking on doors or distributing flyers.
Then, targeted advertising is putting flyers only in the mailboxes of houses that have a lawn instead of distributing at random.
Banning advertising altogether is at best an ill-thought-out position, at worst a call to enforce a planned soviet-style economy. Banning targeted advertising does not seem much better (of course the article qualifies this proposed ban as only being "on the basis of pervasive tracking", not general).
The problem starts when your "targeted" advertising will send flyers to only those homes where both husband/wife work and have little free time; or households that have very young children or household with single parent or the household that owns very old lawnmower that was repaired recently etc. Then your "targeted advertising" starts charging more from households that have only senior citizens etc.etc.
It's always useful to go back to basics: Let's say I'm a teenager and I want to make some money to buy a new bike by mowing lawns. Will I just sit on my front porch and hope that my neighbours will read my mind? Of course not, I'll advertise by knocking on doors or distributing flyers.
Then, targeted advertising is putting flyers only in the mailboxes of houses that have a lawn instead of distributing at random.
Banning advertising altogether is at best an ill-thought-out position, at worst a call to enforce a planned soviet-style economy. Banning targeted advertising does not seem much better (of course the article qualifies this proposed ban as only being "on the basis of pervasive tracking", not general).