The Sad Math of Ads

Advertising permeates modern life, drowning us in messages of inadequacy and promises of salvation through consumption. Ads have become so commonplace, that we’ve stopped questioning their existence. This article is my attempt to change that—if only a little—by introducing advertising's costs in a simple formula: ads add waste, subtract wellbeing, divide attention, and multiply endlessly. By understanding and changing this equation, we can reclaim control and envision a society where integrity and purpose prevail over profit-driven manipulation.

Add Waste

Advertising squanders both physical and mental resources. For instance, over 100 billion pieces of junk mail are sent annually in the United States alone, along with trillions of marketing and spam emails. Intellectually, ads deprive us through deception, promote censorship, and creating monopolies. More generally, advertising manufactures wants and insecurities, manipulating us into buying unnecessary products—all at a higher price to recoup the costs of annoying ads.

“You can manipulate consumers into wanting and therefore buying your products… is it ethical? I don’t know. It’s a game. Our role… is to move products.”

Lucy Hughes, co-creator of “The Nag Factor”

Subtract Wellbeing

Research consistently shows that ads reduce our wellbeing, both individually and nationally. But how? As the saying goes, “comparison is the thief of joy,” and advertising is just that. Ads push us to measure our lives, belongings, achievements, and experiences against idealized portrayals, suggesting their product will bridge the gap. This fuels feelings of inadequacy and a culture of materialism—both of which are linked to unhappiness.

Divide Attention

Ads hijack our attention, whether for a few minutes with a video ad or mere seconds with a billboard. While the first is annoying and a waste of our time, the second can be fatal. A recent study estimates that digital billboards increase the chance of a crash soon thereafter by 4.5% and certain roadside safety billboards actually cause 17,000 more crashes a year across the United States. While the distraction of an individual popup, poster, or sponsored break may seem trivial, the cumulative effect has created an attention crisis with far-reaching consequences.

Multiply Endlessly

We're exposed to thousands of ads a day, but it wasn't always like this. New media often start without ads to attract customers, then add advertising once customers are locked in. Television, radio, and the internet all began ad-free, but are now saturated with commercial messages. Ads continue to encroach in more places, like schools, public transportation, restaurants, movie scenes, walkways, and taxis. Where the profit motive dominates—which is increasingly everywhere—our attention is up for sale.

“Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.”

Banksy

What You Can Do

There’s several things you can do to minimize advertising impact on yourself: 

• Use adblock: the web with adblock vs. without is night and day and reveals how much advertising has expanded on the internet.

• Limit exposure to ad-laden media, such as television and social media, to mitigate the influence of advertising. Similarly, supporting public TV and radio helps decommercialize media for you and others.

• Go on a shopping detox: consider buying nothing but food for a month to reset your relationship with shopping and loosen the hold commercial messaging has on you.

• Concentrate on intrinsic values: advertising tends to extol extrinsic values like money, fame, and personal image, which often lead to anxiety and depression. Focusing on intrinsic values like community, self acceptance and growth, spirituality, relationships, and physical health can crowd out extrinsic values and lead to a more meaningful life.

• Unsubscribe from marketing emails: While the initial task of unsubscribing from a sea of marketing emails seems daunting, it quickly pays off in a vastly decluttered and decommercialized inbox. You can always resubscribe, but I doubt you'd want to.

• Depersonalize your ads: Personalized ads are better at manipulating you by using your insecurities, so depersonalizing them weakens their effect. Thankfully, Google and Facebook both let you opt out of personalized ads from their networks, which is most online ads, even outside their apps. 

What We Can Do

While you have some control in reducing advertising in your life, society dictates what, when, and where advertising is allowed. For instance, installing adblock on your computer does nothing against billboards, junk mail, and the resulting culture of materialism. Collective issues require collective solutions:

• Tax advertising: by stealing our attention and polluting our minds and skylines, ads create negative externalities. Most developed countries therefore tax ads, but extended lobbying has kept advertising tax deductible in the United States. Closing this loophole would both reduce advertising and help fund public projects that are currently dependent on being plastered with ads, like public transportation.

• Limit or ban billboards: Four states and 700 towns in America have banned billboards as part of beautification projects. Short of a complete ban, municipalities can limit the number and type (e.g., ban digital billboards). While billboards are the most obvious example of ads in public spaces, ads continue to encroach in more places and may only be limited through collective action.

“If you own this child at an early age, you can own this kid for years to come.” 

Mike Searles, Former President of Kids “R” Us

• Limit ads targeted to children: below the age of 12, children can't tell when someone is trying to sell something to them, leading Sweden to ban all advertising directed to children under 12. Several other countries restrict advertising of unhealthy food to minors. While the United States has put political pressure on tech companies targeting children, it’s done little to reduce other advertising directed at kids.

Together, we can break free from advertising's deceptive and intrusive messages and create a world that values more than just profit—a world where our attention, integrity, and happiness come first.