What would good and ethical advertising look like? Maybe I decide that I want to be advertised to now, and go to my preferred advertising venue.
Epistemic status: throwing ideas
Ads exist because people aren’t aware of all the products that exist. At its best, an ad manages to link a product with a client who needs it. Ethics in advertising should focus on maximising the chances of that, while minimizing side effects.
To me, the most obvious way to get that is that advertisings only assert and imply true things. As a bonus, they would avoid shocking the receiver needlessly, or uglifying their spot too much.
On a system level, the medium displaying ads would rate their quality (based on the aforementioned criteria and others), and the duration an ad is displayed would be commensurate with its rating.
Epistemic status: throwing ideas
Ads exist because people aren’t aware of all the products that exist. At its best, an ad manages to link a product with a client who needs it. Ethics in advertising should focus on maximising the chances of that, while minimizing side effects.
To me, the most obvious way to get that is that advertisings only assert and imply true things. As a bonus, they would avoid shocking the receiver needlessly, or uglifying their spot too much.
On a system level, the medium displaying ads would rate their quality (based on the aforementioned criteria and others), and the duration an ad is displayed would be commensurate with its rating.