As a consequence of this, I think advertising will always persist irrationally unless the system if changed to prevent this irrational behavior. A really high tax on any ad spend would probably work.
It is an interesting question you raise about second order effects-- would there be ways to work around this to get advertising for free?. For example maybe spam would become more common and intrusive and be used by more reputable companies. Note that ideas such as "hashcash" were solutions to effectively put a fee on email spam.
The root of what is troubling about this all is that free speech isn't a sufficient framework in the modern world where attention and time are constrained.
I'm in favor of taxing ads, but it'd need to be comprehensive definition unless you want some unintended consequences.
It does get more complicated about how you define that it’s an advertisement vs not. And there’s lots of “paid placement” stories even in “respectable” newspapers that masquerade as news but would be hard to pierce the veil on as advertisement instead of just “free speech”
I would word the law very generally: an X% sales tax on any transaction made in exchange for publishing, or increasing the visibility of, content supplied by the payer.
this covers Facebook promoted posts, fake editorial articles, search ads, even NPR ad spots and YouTuber sponsors. it wouldn't affect product reviewers taking bribes from companies, unless the companies actually supplied review drafts.
sadly, this probably falls afoul of Citizens United, which was about the legality of ad money.
I've only read peripherally about this and don't have any good sources handy, but it's a historical fact which strikes me as quite interesting.
High tax on ad spend would be a throwback to our Christian moralist days where we decide that some spending is good spending that we like and other is bad spending. Most attempts to ban payment for boosting speech have failed, see citizens united.
These days, sin taxes like those on soda are often not motivated by religious concerns, at least in the US. They're taxes on goods or services that are harmful to individuals or society.
Of course, there are arguments around the externalities of all of these things. I view most of those arguments as society contextual (people don't like others smoking, so it is an externality) as opposed to something like carbon which would have a negative externality regardless of this societal/cultural context.
I agree with you here and find the obsession many people here have with advertising weird. Still, alcohol pretty clearly has a negative externality "regardless of societal/cultural context." The consistently high percentage of vehicular deaths, assaults, rapes, damage to developing babies through FAS, and so on are all largely borne by people besides the drinker themselves.