When we try to judge an activity or institution, we need to know what is its nature or purpose. If you travel, to tell how well you are doing it is necessary to know where you want to go. If one wishes to judge parenting or teaching or scholarship, one needs to know what these are so as to determine whether a given instance fulfils its nature, function or purpose. Unless we know what advertising is, we cannot judge or evaluate it or what others claim about it. One might think here of what is involved in malpractice lawsuits. Malpractice presupposes standards of conduct. Without standards there can be no way to identify and distinguish what is and is not proper conduct, including in a craft or profession. In a typical ad, people are told of or shown various possible benefits of some service or product, usually with the aid of a gimmick or two that are meant to focus our consciousness and to call attention to the likely benefits of the service or product being advertised. From this, we can conclude that advertising is a form of promotion - moving something ahead positively. It is a call to people to pay attention to some service or product being offered for sale, just in case they may then come to want it. Advertising then is a natural extension of commerce and marketing: the promotion of what is being produced for sale.
