I hate advertising. There I said it. Not exactly the most dissenting opinion, but I now have to get my head around it for the current project. What I dislike about it is that it is greedy by nature. It's about getting people to spend their money on things they didn't know they 'needed'. And yes people will say "but look at this ad/campaign, look at the message it's selling/it's art!". Fair enough, but if you want to create a piece of art, why prostitute it to sell things? If you want to tell a story or raise a message, don't whore it off to fill pockets.
And lately everything is worse, when I was young it used to be confined to billboards, T.V. and Radio, but now, its everywhere. They pop up in front of web content, alongside it, above it, below it. The other day, trying to watch a trailer for a new film on youtube, I had to wait for an advert to play first. While it was, another advert popped up in front of the video content.
For FSMs sake, I was moving and advert so that I could watch an advert so that I could watch an advert!
I understand I live in a capitalism based society, and all the benefits it brings, but where is the line going to be drawn?
/rant

Anyway, here's a nice little article I found based on advertising to children in the UK. Handy.