i would suggest voters vote based on something other than ads... However if people wish to vote based on ads that's their prerogative.
They could vote based on something else but they are usually so concerned about a democrat/republican getting in that they'd rather vote for a republican/democrat.
Unless you personally know the people you vote for, or spend a lot of time researching their history, their programs and the relation of those to political, economic and social issues, you are voting based on ads. Believing something else is deluding oneself.
Most of the time I don't vote. When I do I vote libertarian, I've never seen an ad for the libertarian party in my country.
When I buy ads (donate) I buy ads I buy for the Green Party in areas where they are splitting the left wing vote.
The best way I know of to influence government is to have professionals prepare my taxes, and to ensure the government follows the law to the letter. Voting is designed to limit the influence of the individual on politics while appearing to give people choice.
If we wanted government representative of the views of the people we'd just draw 500 names of citizens out of a hat.
Since outside Switzerland direct democracy does not exist, we get the representative version. Sure enough, companies can't vote, but technically neither can citizens. Not on individual matters.
What happens is that companies pay their congress-critters to vote for them. This has the added benefit that representatives can (and do!) propose legislation that not-quite-coincidentally would benefit the companies who already pay them in various forms.
I've said it before - we are currently pretty close to the original meaning of democracy. Democracy, as practiced by the city state of Athena, gave vote to free men, who made up 10-15% of their population[0]. In order to qualify a free man, you had to be an adult non-slave male who owned land. Or to put it another way: you had to have a vested interest in keeping the system suitably exclusive.
After all, if you are going to have a say in how the state is run and you have established business interests, you certainly wouldn't let any riff-raff in the decision-making process. Their interests would interfere with yours. And if given the vote, they could outnumber your faction.
