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Your post suggests you're operating under the assumption that advertising itself is a valid activity. The example about a new small business seems totally legit.
But in reality most advertising money is spent by companies like Coca Cola, that we all already know. And they know that too, which means they know for a fact that continuing to spend money on advertising pays off.
This can only be true if advertising isn't about awareness of your brand, but about directly influencing buying decision. In other words, it's brainwashing.
A small business should get known through word of mouth, through endorsements in pillow-related media and communities (in this example). If their product is a good one and they get the right people talking about it, no advertising is needed to succeed as a business. Only line-must-go-up companies that are not content with what they can achieve with an honest way of doing business need advertising to sell even more crap.
IMHO it is entirely valid to reject all forms of advertising, and most of it should be outlawed. As a species we're wasting a colossal amount of effort and energy on something that shouldn't even be a thing.
This is something I found myself recognizing not too long ago. Why would a company like Coca-Cola, already the dominant force in the soft drinks market, need to spend so much money on advertising? It's not to attract new customers, but to drown out their competition. If you have big players like Coke continuing to spend millions on each ad buy, smaller competitors get priced out and their message is lost in the signal noise.
Yes. If I need something, I'll go looking for it. If your product is a decent solution to my problem, I'll find it and buy it when I need it. If you want visibility and/or publicity, you can advertise on your own platform, or do reviews, beta-testing, or press-releases in relevant channels.
There is literally no reason that you should ever shove your product in my face. The people whose job it is to do the shoving should be fired, and replaced by people that actually contribute to solving real problems. We have more than enough of those.