Why? hopefully not. The reason HN is cool is that content is moderated by the community. That's exactly what you don't get in neither google nor newspapers
If we added a sticky for each time a company did that the entire front page would be full of posts of this sort ;)
Hackernews has no sticky feature.
I can't really get too worked up about advertiser's rights. HN doesn't even sticky posts, and this doesn't cross some threshold to make an exception.
dang can sticky posts, but he only does it when there are multiple pages of discussions or to redirect the discussion if it’s a shitshow at that point of time.
On HN? I believe the awareness is high as it is.
Handing out pamphlets would have a bigger effect. But that would actually require real effort on your part...