I stopped advertising and nothing happened
These articles typically come in the form of, I was paying for my brand name when I was number one on organic search. I wasn't validating any of my other ad spend, I stopped and didn't see any negative impact, therefore advertising doesn't work/is a scam.As someone who's worked in the industry a while, I agree that it's a sad state of affairs generally but when people extrapolate that this means all advertising is bs it's just not true. Fundamentally business orders should track results from their ads the same way they look at impact anywhere else in their business.