The idea feels like sci-fi because you’re so used to it, imagining ads gone feels like asking to outlaw gravity. But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.
The traditional argument pro-advertising—that it provides consumers with necessary information—hasn’t been valid for decades.
The future is not required to contain the business models of the past. More specially, I don’t believe “there are businesses that would fail” is a good argument. We need UBI or a better social safety net for the people in those businesses, but the businesses can simply fail and nothing will be lost.
That said, I think advertising can probably be reformed through a combination of removing the puffery exception, enhanced enforcement of existing truth in advertising laws, and increased civil liability for falsehoods at all layers: product (Kraft, Nestle, Tesla), production (“Mad men”), and propagation (networks, Hulu, YT)