[codeup]

First this: "advertising is, ultimately, a form of discovery, a way of connecting people who want or need something with those that supply it."

Then this: "How exactly is it bad to connect people with things they want and need?"

And this: "How anyone can have a moral objection to that baffles me."

This is misleading. There may be people who object to advertising in principle, but even if you don't, if you are seriously trying to think about "moral objections", you need to at least consider what is being advertised and how it is being advertised. Instead, your comment is an example of how advertising advertises itself.

Edit: clarified for coherence

[esrauch]

For almost any nonessential item, no one knows what they want until they see it. That might be seeing it when you are walking around a store, seeing your friend who had it, or seeing an ad for it on google but no one would ever think "I need an XBox360" if they have literally never heard of it.

There are rare exceptions, eg someone is hiking and their toes are too cold and they think "I wish I had boots that would keep my toes warmer", then they go find an item that matches that, but I think that is a tiny percentage of the purchases.

[starwed]

That's a weird way to read the OP comment, and I think you're way overreacting to it. You seem to be drawing some insidious connection between those two statements that simply isn't there.

OP didn't claim all advertisements were morally acceptable, but that there was nothing inherently wrong with the enterprise.