It subsidizes basically all modern entertainment, from the filmmaking and sports industries (through TV Shows and sports broadcasts, respectively), to musicians and amateur filmmakers (through Spotify and Youtube).
The costs of advertising are ultimately passed down to consumers in the form of higher prices for products and services, not unlike a VAT or sales tax. Because rich people spend more money than the poor (citation needed), they end up paying a lot more of this "tax" while getting the same amount of entertainment for it.
Targeted advertising only exacerbated these dynamics. Because high-spenders are very desirable customers to have, companies can now demand more money for the ability to target them, which turns advertising from a linear to a progressive tax.
Advertising turned the internet into a sort of public commons, with no government intervention and the inevitable inefficiencies and inflexibilities that come with those. It gave us free, high-quality video and voice calls to anywhere across the world, free unlimited texting, including picture messaging and group conversations, free video hosting for everybody, regardless of scale, free music (through Youtube, Spotify and the radio), with at least some compensation to artists, free movies and TV shows (on free-to-air TV as well as through services like Pluto), excellent free educational content (e.g. 3b1b, university lecturers hosted on Youtube at no charge), as well as cheaper entertainment overall through ad-supported tiers.
I think framing things this way is important when discussing advertising regulation. Maybe we want more cheap groceries, don't care about cheaper luxury cars and don't mind less free entertainment, so maybe we should ban grocery ads and encourage more Mercedes ads. Maybe we're fine with less free entertainment if it gets us fewer alcoholics, so we ban ads for alcohol. Those are tradeoffs worth thinking about, perhaps tradeoffs worth making, but they are tradeoffs, and it is important to be conscious of that.
Even if advertisers make more money from the rich (citation needed), the poor are still disproportionately negatively effected. I would argue that it's less ethical to persuade someone with $100 to their name to spend $10 on something they don't need, than to persuade someone with $1,000,000 to spend $500 on something they don't need.
To bolster this argument, look at the things that are most advertised to the poor: alcohol, gambling, fast food, and predatory loans (including predatory auto financing).
The wealthy, meanwhile, are more likely to be targeted with ads for lifestyle goods: health foods, travel, gym memberships.
It subsidizes basically all modern entertainment, from the filmmaking and sports industries (through TV Shows and sports broadcasts, respectively), to musicians and amateur filmmakers (through Spotify and Youtube).
The costs of advertising are ultimately passed down to consumers in the form of higher prices for products and services, not unlike a VAT or sales tax. Because rich people spend more money than the poor (citation needed), they end up paying a lot more of this "tax" while getting the same amount of entertainment for it.
Targeted advertising only exacerbated these dynamics. Because high-spenders are very desirable customers to have, companies can now demand more money for the ability to target them, which turns advertising from a linear to a progressive tax.
Advertising turned the internet into a sort of public commons, with no government intervention and the inevitable inefficiencies and inflexibilities that come with those. It gave us free, high-quality video and voice calls to anywhere across the world, free unlimited texting, including picture messaging and group conversations, free video hosting for everybody, regardless of scale, free music (through Youtube, Spotify and the radio), with at least some compensation to artists, free movies and TV shows (on free-to-air TV as well as through services like Pluto), excellent free educational content (e.g. 3b1b, university lecturers hosted on Youtube at no charge), as well as cheaper entertainment overall through ad-supported tiers.
I think framing things this way is important when discussing advertising regulation. Maybe we want more cheap groceries, don't care about cheaper luxury cars and don't mind less free entertainment, so maybe we should ban grocery ads and encourage more Mercedes ads. Maybe we're fine with less free entertainment if it gets us fewer alcoholics, so we ban ads for alcohol. Those are tradeoffs worth thinking about, perhaps tradeoffs worth making, but they are tradeoffs, and it is important to be conscious of that.