Outside of products that are themselves addicting, I don’t really see any actual harm coming from advertising. Yes, I fucking hate ads, but thats because they are annoying and interrupt the things I do like. The real manipulative practices I see come pretty much from the video game’s industry. Alcohol and tobacco are naturally addictive and the people who make and sell those products do rely on that for sales; but the advertising isn’t making them more addictive. Games, on the other hand, are true weapons of psychological warfare.
Many development companies have psychologists on staff specifically to come up with new, stronger ways of addicting players or causing FOMO, or otherwise manipulating a small handful of the population susceptible to such a degree, they would go into ruin spending money on useless digital shit. And it’s like every little thing in the game. Your eyes are generally watching a game you’re enjoying a lot more than a TV ad, billboard, radio advert or other form of advertisement we are constantly bombarded with.
You ever see a video or play Call of Duty and wonder why there is so much “noise” on screen? Why it rewards you for every little thing you do? Because completing goals triggers endorphins. Instead of waiting for a win or loss of an entire game, they can hook you on the good brain chemicals by giving you tons of smaller accomplishments in rapid succession. When games have rarity levels for things you can buy with real cash, things that can literally be created out of thin air if they so desired because it’s a piece of software, it’s manipulating you into thinking somehow there is some scarcity in a thing that in actuality has none.
They are so good at manipulating the player, they can get you to do things subconsciously just with a few tricks of level design. A lot of this manipulation is just the nature of the beast; but plenty AAA devs weaponize the shit out of it and it’s pretty scary that if they wanted to, they could likely “Manchurian Candidate” someone. Though I suppose there is some humor to be found in that violence itself in a game does little to make one violent IRL; but it actually would be possible to design a game that drives the right person to violence, if someone was sadistic enough to make such a game.