If you've ever done advertising on a small scale, you'll see how effective it is. For example, I worked in an antique shop that saw perhaps ten customers a day in its first month. At the end of that month we had an advertisement in the local newspaper, a full-page puff piece with a picture and about 500 words of text. I couldn't imagine that anyone actually read the little village newspaper it was in, but our foot traffic tripled for the following week, then dropped right off again.
But consumers aren't buying the advertising, they are buying the product. Advertising is an expense for both the producer ($) and the consumer (time) so neither can profit from it.
That's not quite correct. A company spends 'x' amount on advertising, hoping that it will return 'x + profit' through increased sales. The customer obviously doesn't profit from it, but when does a customer actually profit from anything?
The point I was trying to make was, if advertiser's increased profits were less than the expense of advertising (e.g., a company spends $20 on advertising, but profits grow $10), then they the company would not advertise again, since that would be as effective as burning money in a pit.
No they are not buying the ad but from the producers perspective advertising is the way to get their product in the consideration set or possibly push someone further down the purchase path.