The view from 1957:

” The 20th century has witnessed the growth of a vast apparatus of advertising and publicity which, by its very volume, blinds and deafens the majority of the people to any real appreciation of the world in which they live.
Advertisement has indeed become a vast parasitic industry, whose function is effectively to exact a very concealed purchase tax from the consumers for the benefits of a few newspapers and advertisement magnates” [and today of course media magnates such as Rupert].

Bernal, Science in History (1957)