Ads are everywhere and we may feel like we can tune them out but the fact is, these images are carefully designed to get through to you. No one is above it. The advertisement shown here is for a credit card, something that we all know how to get without being reminded of how easy it is. Credit companies find new ways to try to trick us into debt faster and faster. Most credit card companies have "exclusive" cards for an annual fee, catering to the elite (or those who wish they were 'elite').What kind of effect do all these loan and credit advertisements have on children? Children are exposed to so many advertisements that it is necessary to consider how ads impact their lives. Designers need to look at ads through a child's eyes as well as their target market because children soak up everything they see like a sponge. How can it be morally ethical to train a child through bombarding them with advertisements that having a credit card makes you elite? or that taking out a loan is a simple thing to do?
Brand advertising is probably the biggest single source of harm in our world today.
Wars are horrible, but advertising (well, propaganda, which really just the government form of advertising) is what makes it possible for countries to wage them.
Environmental destruction could be incredibly damaging, but if it is, the causes of it will have been heavily driven by advertising!
Worst of all, brand advertising breaks the fundamental paradigm of capitalism, where people rationally choose the best product for the best price; instead, with advertising, people are tricked by emotional lures into buying the product that is marketed the best for as much as they can be scammed out of.
I hope that someday, enough people will realize the harm and force businesses to take a more ethical approach of honestly communicating the value of their products in ways that can be rationally processed and without using emotional lures.
For what it's worth, I think simple text ads (like Google's) do a decent job of this, but image and video based advertising are usually 99% emotional lures and 1% actual product information.
Images and video could be used responsibly to communicate valuable product information, but the temptation to abuse them to brainwash and irrationally influence people is just too high, right now.