Advertisements have become ubiquitous in the last few decades, and it is nearly impossible to imagine life without adverts in various forms. This unprecedented and daily volume of ads is certainly an adverse development because people are being manipulated into overspending and are likely to suffer from information overload.
A typical advertisement usually includes emphasis on how great the product or service is. For example, clothing can be promoted as cheaper or more luxurious, depending on the target audience. Either way, people often end up purchasing clothes that they rarely wear, which means they engage in irresponsible consumerism. Clothing is just one of many instances that can be used to explain how people waste their financial resources on items that they arguably do not need. Other relevant examples include buying new technological devices on a regular basis or spending money on expensive food only because of how effectively it was marketed.
It is not just consumerism that is a major problem in the present discussion. Information overload, in fact, can be a more destructive development that comes along with the proliferation of marketing. Every ad includes information, whether it is visual, auditory or text-based, but much of that information is totally irrelevant. Since many people still lack media literacy and do not know the fundamentals of marketing, they can fall victim to the sheer amount of manipulative information that is produced by advertisements they see everywhere. In other words, in a world that is already chaotic enough, advertisements can be additional distractions.
In conclusion, I do not see any significant benefits in the increased number of advertisements we see in everyday life. I firmly believe that it is one of the worst tendencies of modernity due to elevated levels of consumerism and superfluity of information.