I honestly think this is a bit of a naive proposition, and an "obsolete" point of view, specially when you factor in the most obvious thing:<p>Advertisement, per definition, is self evident. You have way more "less obvious" marketing tools, like product placement, but even those that are subtle, are in set in a context - like a movie or a tv show.<p>I think it's way more troublesome the obscure parts of what the paper claims to be "product information" - that is where true deception and manipulation occurs. This is where your defenses and your guard are down. You don't know you're being manipulated, even if it's a simple paid 5 star review with no review text, it's a deceptive bias. Another example, is undisclosed paid promotions/reviews from influencers.<p>People would be better off acknowledging that advertising works, and that it is present in media, and we should be critical of it, which I believe in 2020, we're aware of it. Else if you're going that path, then you can start make monopolies on media and information distribution that arguably serve any agenda - even if that agenda is to gather more share/views/audiences, and you end up banning media.<p>Because that's the truth - the majority of endeavors that are distributed in media have an agenda, and try to manipulated the audiences in some way.<p>With this said, I'm not saying that all advertising is fine, in fact, this is probably the hardest times for authorities and regulators to control, and fine, abuses. You just need to log on Facebook and see illegal claims being made in advertising, things that would never be allowed on TV/Radio/Outdoors. Yet they generate massive amounts of reach.