Promotion is a need, and a very important need for ideas to spread. We all know that the concept of "if you build it they will come" doesn't work". Google's adaptation for this was to make advertising relevant... which is actually a considerable improvement over historical media models...

There's a saying in sales: "people hate to be sold, but they love to buy"... which is akin to what you are saying here. Advertising isn't the problem... the problem is that the reasons why people are promoting aren't novel enough... (rent seeking... which creates noise)