Except for classified advertising which specifies an item or product and what it consists of I feel we can do without advertising. Childhood obesity, distortion of the political process and unwanted claims on our attention are all effects of advertising.

We have loathed advertising and our chance to banish it is being done with relish. TV shows are only there to fill in the spaces between the ads.

Coming to this from a novel angle;
Perhaps now in the 21st century, if we may regard rampant consumerism as the grand folly that exhausted the earth's resources and caused environmental ruin, then perhaps the demise of force fed advertising now occurring, is a vanguard phenomenon heralding a major reappraisal of our economic base, ie, a move away from our obsession with manufactured goods. That the internet is a virtual space and not a physical thing accords with this new outlook.

So the question may indeed be more than, 'how do I sell stuff?' to coming up with a new business model, that is not involved with making 'stuff' at all in a postmodern economy.