Freedom:

Ad Creep and Commercialism

Ads are everywhere, and they are occupying increasing amounts of public space. The logical extension of the current pattern of advertising expansion is a world where no space remains unbranded. Corporations' messages will be omnipresent in this world, leaving no room for open, free, public space. We must stop this colonization of the mental environment. Commercial Alert has done significant work on the issue of ad creep and commercialism:

"Americans feel assaulted by ads. There are ads in schools, airport lounges, doctors offices, movie theaters, hospitals, gas stations, elevators, convenience stores, on the Internet, on fruit, on ATM’s, on garbage cans and countless other places. There are ads on beach sand and restroom walls.
'I don't know if anything is sacred anymore,' Mike Swanson, who directs ad placement for the ad agency Carmichael Lynch, told the Associated Press.

This assault intensifies virtually every day. With ad budgets skyrocketing, advertising techniques inevitably become more invasive and coercive. Advertisers are engaged in a relentless battle to claim every waking moment, and what one executive called, with chilling candor, 'mind share.'"

- Commercial Alert [source]

For more information on this and other issues, visit Commercial Alert on the Internet.