Another nonsensical article about adtech. This is not how the industry works.
Apple does not have a chance at buying Google because they have the same market cap. Google and Facebook have a massive advantage in scale and precision which is why 2 of the top 10 biggest companies on the planet are ad networks. The valuations come from the sheer profit they generate, not their assets, and how much Disney spends on content is utterly irrelevant. You cannot easily replicate what they do otherwise it would've already been done. Half of the world's population still isn't online so there's plenty of room for growth in the future too.
Everyone loves to talk about waste but skip over how much worse it is with TV and print ads. What matters is getting a positive return. Even if you can't measure anything else, you can see what sales were like before and after doing any advertising, and that's as simple as it gets. Advertising is a key component of marketing, and marketing is how a company grows and creates customers, so unless you change human behavior advertising is not going away.