What do you think about the overabundance of advertising in media?!

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I am just writing up a discussion on this for next week in my Intro to Mass Communications class that I am taking this semester. For one, it's a VERY interesting class - I would suggest it to anyone! I would really appreciate your input and discussion points to help me out with forming my discussion and arguments. It's a fact that (at least in the U.S., according to my professor), we passively digest anywhere between 3,000 and 6,000 advertisements per day. Sound like a lot? That's because it IS! Thinking in terms of internet, television, billboards, radio, etc - and considering the amount of time we all spend on various forms of media per day -- this is shockingly realistic. I also read that in 1994, an "hour long" program actually had about 50 hours of actual content, 10 minutes of that program would be allotted for advertising. Now, the "hour long" program has been reduced to between 42-43 minutes. That means almost a THIRD (33%) of what we watch is commercials. Not only that, but there is product placement in a lot of TV shows (I was watching a show called Pretty Little Liars the other day -- and there were TWO in ONE EPISODE!!!). How does this "impact" you? That is the question that is ultimately getting answered here. How does this impact you and the people around you? Does this make you spend more money on the things being advertised? How often do you actually buy something you see an advertisement for? Or do all of these ads just get you annoyed? What do you *do* during commercial breaks or while commercials come on the radio? Does the overabundance of ads annoy you? How do they affect you? I know this seems like twenty questions, but I would really like to hear your answers and discuss this! Do you think it's inevitable that media companies do this? To meet their "bottom line", as it were? I think for me, it causes me to stream online or stream Netflix rather than watch TV shows. I also listen to mix CDs in my car and sometimes while at work to avoid the seemingly millions of commercial breaks...What do you do?