Even if, as is generally the case, everything that the ad says about the product is scrupulously honest, or at any rate scrupulously avoids outright dishonesty, the implication of the direct address of most commercials - that the announcer speaks with the viewer's welfare at heart - is fraudulent.

The effectiveness of advertising depends on the amount and kind of product information available to consumers... advertising will be more successful the more impoverished the consumer's information environment.

Advertising generally works to reinforce consumer trends rather than to initiate them.

Advertising is much less powerful than advertisers and critics of advertising claim, and advertising agencies are stabbing in the dark much more than they are practicing precision microsurgery on the public consciousness.

Most criticism of advertising is written in ignorance of what actually happens inside these agencies.

Buy me and you will overcome the anxieties I have just reminded you of

It is very likely that many firms spend more on advertising than, for their own best interests, they should.