Advertising: Have we gone too far?

Via Celsias – a very cool protest about the over indulgence in advertising.

Now I’m not at all for banning advertising a la Sao Paulo, but we all have to remember that public spaces, pages in newspapers and minutes of TV or radio time are public goods.

It may make financial sense to add just one extra minute of ads per hour, or tweak the ratio of advertisments to articles, or add a video billboard above every metro stop, but at some point we the people snap.

For many USA TV crossed the line of acceptability years ago, and as a result TiVo and other time shifting solutions are rendering all ads irrelevant.

Newspapers seem to have rules of thumb about the relationship between content and advertising space, and manage the amount of content around the ads. (no I don’t know what they are, but classified sections do stand alone).

Billboards proliferation is generally constrained by reasonable city council rules, except, it seems, in New York.

But when a movement is started (or at least a cult book) that stands against your industry, it could be time to begin some navel gazing, and to accept that like forestry or farming, sustainability of your core product comes first.