I will agree that advertising does not have to be manipulative to be successful, though I would choose a very different example. In my books, being reminded of something that you wanted, but forgot, is still modifying my behavior. It may not have been the intent of the advertiser, but it raised the priority of something that was (presumably) low priority. That is in sharp contrast to advertising as information. If I am looking for a product for a particular task, then advertising is fine to learn about a product's existence. There are certainly flaws to using advertising to learn about products (conflict of interest as an information source, those with a bigger advertising budget can dominate in both impressions and impression), but many companies simply don't have as much access to customers so they have to pay their own way to get information out.

I guess what I'm saying is that I would rather seek out advertising than have it pushed my way.