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In "The World Beyond Your Head" by Matthew B. Crawford, the author introduces the idea of an "attentional commons".

The gist of this is that there are shared resources in the world. Air and water are examples. We recognize them as shared resources, and we recognize that without regulations, some people would use them in ways that make them unusable for others.

Crawford makes a pitch for treating "attention" as a resource, and asserts that folks should have a right not to be addressed by mechanized means.

It's a very good read, especially for software developers, phenomenologists, or cognitive science folks.

Additionally, doesn't advertising go directly against the notion of a "free market"? The idea that "capitalism breeds competition, and competition creates quality" goes out the window when huge advertising budgets urge you to buy some cheap commodity product over a well-made product with a smaller advertising budget.