Do you consider that I've been manipulated? More to the point, do you find anything unethical in this?
Honestly I just want all the advertising (be it physical (signage, billboards, smells, etc) or digital) to get out of my environment. It's almost always noise and it's ugly. There's no reason we couldn't build a hyper-connected system where if I'm looking for something, I can find it.
I want socks? Ok, how many sock stores are local? Ok, what are these made of and who is their supplier, and how does their supplier get their product? (I don't want to support sweat-shop labor or non-sustainability, especially if I'm buying socks.) How have other people found these socks to work?
I should be able to find what I need, which includes being able to understand how that product came to be (transparency). Products shouldn't find me. Ads are noise and we've got enough of that as it is. Would Nike, selling socks, be as successful when all is considered? I'd like to think humans care more for their home and, taking away all the psychological manipulation of ads, could begin to choose how to spend their money more intelligently. A man can dream...
EDIT: To me your question raises the problem we should solve, which advertising kinda solves damn poorly. Get people who need something in touch with the people who can provide that something, and make it transparent for both parties as much as possible.
The truth is, we as human being are constantly target of manipulation, always was, always will be. If not in the form of ads, then masqueraded in other more subtle forms. Would you rather know you're explicitly being subject of manipulation?
I'd rather avoid the manipulation altogether by people I don't know and they can fuck right off with their attempts to sell me something I don't need or am not interested in (all the while contributing to hidden negative externalities). I want to support (manipulate) and be supported by (manipulated by) people I love and know to share my values.
@oldmanjay in another response says this is contrary to free speech, imagines I must be a unhappy unless I'm a hermit, and doesn't mind that he'd be offending me with his noise if we were in the same room. Well guess what, I wouldn't have entered the room in the first place. That's the problem. You can't walk down the street without getting blasted in the retinas by all this damn noise. The fact that it happens on highways while people need to be focusing on the road is just insane. I live in NA.
1) Is it free speech to blow an airhorn on a continuous basis?
2) Is it free speech to spraypaint over a billboard?
You'd expect the directory to be filled with businesses that effectively advertise themselves.