Well, unscrupulous advertising and marketing is. I get the sentiment, because we are flooded with it. But there is honest and respectful advertising too... unfortunately, most companies gravitate towards making a quick buck instead of investing in earning trust.
Exactly. Letting people know you have a product/service which will make their life easier isn't a bad thing, and you have to have some way of communicating that to prospective buyers. The problem is when you start lying about your product, or use psychological tricks to get people to buy something they don't need.
It's just easier to trick people and prey on psychological triggers than it is to make totally truthful ads and high quality, reliable products and services.
The best advertising I have ever found is in the Overcast podcast app. I’ve found a few interesting podcasts based on the ads. Marco Arment (the developer) created his own ad platform for his app so he would know who is advertising and he wouldn’t have any mystery meet third party binary blob in his code.