Advertising Today Today, advertisements are everywhere and in every media form. They take the human form of social media influencers (is this magical tea effective if my favorite social media personality says it is?). They show up in almost every Google search and get mixed in with user posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and most other social media sites. They clutter websites on the Internet and on the screens of our phones. They occupy up to half the space in most daily newspapers and consumer magazines. They fill our mailboxes and wallpaper the buses and subways we ride. Dotting the nation's highways, billboards promote fast-food and hotel chains, while neon signs announce the names of stores along major streets and strip malls. Ads are even found in the restrooms of malls, restaurants, and bars. At local movie theaters, ads precede trailers for the latest Hollywood blockbusters. In the films themselves (and in TV shows, music videos, and digital games), product placement-the paid appearance of particular goods in a narrative or scene-is a multimillion dollar business. Ads are part of a radio deejay's morning patter, get interspersed throughout most commercial podcasts, and routinely interrupt our favorite TV and cable programs. In addition, according to the Food Marketing Institute, the typical 310 The Future of Advertising Although commercialism-through packaging both products and politicians has generated cultural feedback that is often critical of advertising's pervasiveness, the growth of the industry has not diminished. Ads continue to fascinate. Many consumers buy magazines or watch the Super Bowl just for the advertisements. Adolescents decorate their rooms with their favorite brands and identify with the images certain products convey. In 2021, advertising spending in the United States was projected to total $236.7 billion.60 A number of factors have made advertising's largely unchecked growth possible. Many Americans tolerate advertising as a necessary evil for maintaining the economy, and many others dismiss advertising as not believable and trivial. Thus, unwilling to admit its centrality to global culture, many citizens do not think advertising is significant enough to monitor or reform. Such attitudes have ensured advertising's pervasiveness and suggest the need to escalate our critical vigilance. As individuals and as a society, we have developed an uneasy relationship with advertising. Favorite ads and commercial jingles remain part of our cultural world, yet we detest irritating and repetitive television commercials or invasive social media ads We realize that without ads many media < 339