what drives business: marketing or advertising?

hi gina, advertising is small part of the marketing principle , Clear marketing insight will guide you for impactful ads .
no business will succeed if it's not Marketing Driven business for example , mcdonalds the most successful fast-food chain in the world , when they open the first store in Indonesia there was no sales, the company was facing a problem that no one enter the store to buy the famous happy meal !!? they advertise or tried everything to grow the sales, but also the same result sales down, and no one know the reason.
at that time the company start to do more marketing , more specific Marketing Research and research result was surprising , basically Indonesian people don't eat french fries / potato , it's something cannot be changed because its food habits for indonesians , so advertising in that case is wasting money and time, the company tried to dig deeper into the culture and finds that this market more likely to eat ( white rice ) from that point MAC developed the product to be a sandwich , white rice , coke the sales grow up , i think i have seen KFC selling rice also , am not sure but i think to be alternative or another options for asian's people, if they keeping adverting Booming people with ads , social media , etc , Do you think that will solve the problem ? very simple advertising its only a process helps you to communicate and deliver your marketing message - no more no less

Marketing and advertising are related to each other.
Advertising can be considered as a subset of universal set called Marketing.
The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as a universal set, inside that set you have sub set of advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement.
Advertising only equals one subset of the universal in the strategy.
All of these elements must not only work independently but they also must work together towards the bigger goal.
Marketing is a process that takes time and can involve hours of research for a marketing plan to be effective.
Think of marketing as everything that an organization does to facilitate an exchange between company and consumer.

Actually , Advertising part of marketing for any product, so once you are looking to launch any product, definitly you will use all applicable tools to market your product ......
noting that some items ( ie....
Vitamins ....
or food supplement ), needs more advertising tools than others in addition to different strategic tools.

I personally believe Marketing is too big of a term to be compared to advertising.
Advertising is merely a marketing tool and nothing more, and in fact through my personal experience I would say Advertising in general is a little bit overrated as it might boost short-term sales (at a cost) but in long-term everything depends on your product/service.
I have seen many companies that go into advertising before they actually get a chance to decide whether or not their product is ready for it and they lose the battle then and there.

Marketing is much more advanced than advertising and selling.
Marketing takes you through the entire cycle.
From understanding an inherent gap or need in the market, to finding a solution to fill that gap or satisfy the customer's need by developing a product/service, and then using various means of communication to talk directly to your target audience to make them aware, incite interest, create desire, make them take action to purchase the product or service, and then ensure they are happy with the product/service to avoid any sort of post purchase dissonance.
All this are various cogs in the wheel of marketing.
Hence it aims at adding value to the customer in such a way that a positive relationship is developed that they eventually become brand ambassadors for your product or service.
It’s about creating lifetime customers.
Hence, the purpose of marketing, at least theoretically, is to make selling superfluous.
To make the customers come to you for meeting their inherent need by utilizing a pull strategy.
Advertising and selling are some of the important parts of this process called Marketing.

To be frank with you, neither marketing nor advertising are business drivers, What really drives the business is the "Market" it self, whatever changes in the market, changes the whole business :)

advertising

Marketing is major parameter which drives the business. The advertising is a support function to the marketing.

I define Marketing as the act of selling a product or service.
On the other hand, Advertising is the act of trying to get people to buy your product or use your service.
There is a difference.
Marketing says, "I'm selling shoes." Advertising says, "buy the shoes I'M selling." Advertising exists as a specialized form of Marketing.
Not every product/service advertises.
But every product/service needs to market itself.
To answer your question, I choose neither.
What drives business is the quality-price ratio of your product/service in relation to your brand identity and objective(s).
High quality + high price works for Apple, but may not work for Coke.
Low quality + low price may sound absurd, but it is the backbone of "cheap alternatives." High quality + low price may translate to large sales, but may not show large profits, which runs the risk of bankrupting a business.
Low quality + high price is the recipe used by counterfeit products.

Its depends to your strategies timeline Marketing its for long term, ads for short term

It depends if marketing staff are doing their marketing ideas or they are just calling specialized marketing companies who are doing their job.