I honestly don't think the biggest risk to us is consumer companies trying to sell us wares through overt, disclosed advertising... There is a much greater risk from "Marketing" and "PR" firms passing off paid pieces as "News" or "Information" - example in the case of much woodworking content presented as "Articles" are in reality paid and sponsored "Advertorials"....
Here's how something like this would work... Say I start John's Chisels R Us to sell my own line of chisels... But I need to find a way to get the word out - but I want to specifically target people who will buy my stuff.... So I contract a PR/Marketing firm and pay a Woodworking magazine or website to work together to write up a very favorable review of my product... Perhaps even do a shootout with a bunch of different chisels where mine comes out near the top... And then I pay them to feature my tools in a series of projects they are doing over the next year...
Notice how none of these efforts have disclosed that I am paying for these things to happen... They are all presented as "Objective Journalsim.." This blurs the line between "Marketing" and is where things become dangerous - because it is not DISCLOSED that the efforts are paid, and who is paying for the work which was created to sell a product...
Say now you found out later on that all the favorable reviews you read of John's Chisels R Us tools were created by a professional marketing firm and were simply then "Edited" by one of the prominent magazine editors under his own name... Say you found out the same thing for the "Shootout".... That it was a paid promotion contrived to show that John's Chisels R Us are real solid performers when they are actually re-branded rejects from Harbor freight... And so they created a bunch of tasks and a ranking system which would make an inferior tool look like it performed well.. So perhaps they highlighted a bunch of "Real Life Chisel Use" tasks "For the rest of us" like cutting sandpaper, prying paint cans, pulling nails, and chipping glue off cement... Perhaps they tested them all using "Real world sharpening" on a portable belt sander and older Silica stones which won't sharpen the new alloy steels... Perhaps they rolled them around in the back of a pickup truck for a week then sharpened them on a cement driveway.... Then add a few contrived opinion ranking categories and off you go.... Suddenly - these "chisels" which aren't even good for scraping gum off your shoes come out as solid performers.... And you are the one who is a problem when you complain that they just don't hold up right in your hands....
and I also want to put a little bug in your ear... Does that sound like any of the web content or magazone reviews you have been through... I know I was sucked in by the allure of some tools like this about 10 years ago.. And was then disappointed when they didn't perform well in my hands.. Come to find out in the last few years that *Everybody* had basically the same results as me... But since the Magazines all said they were awesome and featured them prominently in builds - it must have been a problem with me.... Right?