I think there’s value to marketing, but the societal benefits of advertising are significantly less. Some use cases are beneficial, such as informing the public of a new thing that brings social benefit, but that’s a small minority of it. Marketing though is also researching and finding what people want. Even in a centrally planned communist society that is beneficial. It means that as more people want wheat than potatoes you plan your agricultural decisions accordingly (and use advertisement to manipulate demand for what exists or is more ecologically feasible). Similarly it can help guide which features engineers should be adding to products.

Now what it shouldn’t be is this over bloated system in which everything is controlled by advertisements and your every action is spied on to determine how to sell better to you.