Constitutional rights
In the US, advertising is equated with constitutionally guaranteed freedom of opinion and speech. Therefore any attempt to restrict or ban advertising is almost always considered to be an attack on fundamental rights.
“Currently or in the near future, any number of cases are and will be working their way through the court system that would seek to prohibit any government regulation of... commercial speech (e.g. advertising or food labelling) on the grounds that such regulation would violate citizens’ and corporations’ First Amendment rights to free speech or free press”.
An example for this debate is advertising for tobacco or alcohol but also advertising by mail or fliers (clogged mail boxes), advertising on the phone, in the Internet and advertising for children. Various legal restrictions concerning spamming, advertising on mobile phones, when addressing children, tobacco, alcohol have been introduced by the US, the EU and other countries.
McChesney argues, that the government deserves constant vigilance when it comes to such regulations, but that it is certainly not "the only antidemocratic force in our society. Corporations and the wealthy enjoy a power every bit as immense as that enjoyed by the lords and royalty of feudal times" and "markets are not value-free or neutral; they not only tend to work to the advantage of those with the most money, but they also by their very nature emphasize profit over all else. Hence, today the debate is over whether advertising or food labelling, or campaign contributions are speech... if the rights to be protected by the First Amendment can only be effectively employed by a fraction of the citizenry, and their exercise of these rights gives them undue political power and undermines the ability of the balance of the citizenry to exercise the same rights and/or constitutional rights, then it is not necessarily legitimately protected by the First Amendment." "Those with the capacity to engage in free press are in a position to determine who can speak to the great mass of citizens and who cannot".
Georg Franck at Vienna University of Technology, says that advertising is part of what he calls "mental capitalism", taking up a term (mental) which has been used by groups concerned with the mental environment, such as Adbusters. Franck blends the "Economy of Attention" with Christopher Lasch’s culture of narcissism into the mental capitalism: In his essay "Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse", Sut Jhally writes: "20th century advertising is the most powerful and sustained system of propaganda in human history and its cumulative cultural effects, unless quickly checked, will be responsible for destroying the world as we know it.
Costs
Advertising has developed into a billion-dollar business. In 2006, 391 billion US dollars were spent worldwide for advertising. In Germany, the advertising industry contributes 1.5% of the gross national income. Advertising is considered to raise consumption.
Attention and attentiveness have become a new commodity for which a market developed. "The amount of attention that is absorbed by the media and redistributed in the competition for quotas and reach is not identical with the amount of attention, that is available in society. The total amount circulating in society is made up of the attention exchanged among the people themselves and the attention given to media information. Only the latter is homogenised by quantitative measuring and only the latter takes on the character of an anonymous currency". According to Franck, any surface of presentation that can guarantee a certain degree of attentiveness works as magnet for attention, for example, media which are actually meant for information and entertainment, culture and the arts, public space etc. It is this attraction which is sold to the advertising business. The German Advertising Association stated that in 2007, 30.78 billion Euros were spent on advertising in Germany, 26% in newspapers, 21% on television, 15% by mail and 15% in magazines. In 2002 there were 360,000 people employed in the advertising business. The Internet revenues for advertising doubled to almost 1 billion Euros from 2006 to 2007, giving it the highest growth rates.
Spiegel-Online reported that in the US in 2008 for the first time more money was spent for advertising on Internet (105.3 billion US dollars) than on television (98.5 billion US dollars). The largest amount in 2008 was spent in the print media (147 billion US dollars). Not included are indirect advertising campaigns such as sales, rebates and price reductions. Few consumers are aware of the fact that they are the ones paying for every cent spent for public relations, advertisements, rebates, packaging etc., since they ordinarily get included in the price calculation.