Advertisers

Advertising is paid communication through a non-personal medium in which the sponsor is identified and the message is controlled. Variations include publicity, public relations, product placement, sponsorship, underwriting, and sales promotion. Every major medium is used to deliver these messages: television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, the internet, and billboards. Advertisements can also be seen on the seats of grocery carts, on the walls of an airport walkway, and on the sides of buses, or heard in telephone hold messages or in-store PA systems – nearly anywhere a visual or audible communication can be placed.

Advertising clients are predominantly, but not exclusively, for-profit corporations seeking to increase demand for their products or services. Other organizations that frequently spend large sums of money on advertising include political campaigns, interest groups, religion-supporting organizations, and the military of the United States. Other non-profit organizations are not typical advertising clients, and rely upon free channels, such as public service announcements.

The advertising industry is large and growing. In the United States alone in 2005, spending on advertising reached $144.32 billion, reported TNS Media Intelligence. That same year, according to a report titled Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2006-2010 issued by global accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, worldwide advertising spending was $385 billion. The accounting firm's report projected that worldwide ad spending would exceed half-a-trillion dollars by 2010.

While advertising can be seen as necessary for economic growth, it is not without social costs. Unsolicited Commercial Email and other forms of spam have become so prevalent as to have become a major nuisance of users of these services, as well as being a financial burden on internet service providers. Advertising is increasingly invading public spaces, such as schools, which some critics argue is a form of child exploitation. One scholar has argued that advertising is a toxic by-product of industrial society which may bring about the end of life on earth.