I feel like for a long time there has been talk about online advertising collapsing because it is bad or not useful or something else.

Now I expect it will if only due to economic activity, but outside that I personally suspect online advertising continues to be used generally because folks don't see a lot of alternatives. What are they going to do? Radio ads?

The system might suck, but the internet is where folks are, anyone advertising likely needs to go there / try.