zlacker

>>smnrg+(OP)
Sao Paulo, Brazil, made outdoor advertising illegal. That worked out quite well.

The US used to forbid prescription drug advertising. That seemed to work.

Ads for liquor, marijuana, and gambling are prohibited in many jurisdictions.

The FCC once limited the number of minutes of ads per hour on the public airwaves. That limit was below 10% of air time in the 1960s.

The SEC used to limit ads for financial products to dull "tombstone" ads, which appeared mostly in the Wall Street Journal.

A useful restriction might be to make advertising non tax deductible as a business expense. That encourages putting value into cost of goods sold rather than marketing.

>>Animat+le
That idea about taxation is interesting, I’ve never considered that angle.

It would be very unpopular with the people I’d imagine.

>>barbaz+Ak
Historically, marketing cost was a small fraction of manufacturing cost. Gradually, marketing cost took over in many sectors. STP Oil Treatment was noted in the 1960s for being mostly marketing cost.[1] Marketing cost began to dominate in long-distance telephony, in the era when you could pick your long distance company. Retail Internet access is dominated by marketing cost.

The total amount of consumer products that can be sold is bounded by consumer income. Advertising mostly moves demand around; it doesn't create more demand, at least not in the US where most consumers are spent out.

Think of taxing advertising as multilateral disarmament. Advertising is an overhead cost imposed on consumers. If everybody spends less on advertising, products get cheaper. Tax policy should thus disfavor zero-sum activity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STP_(motor_oil_company)