Comment by rocqua

You can ban specific forms of advertising. But the general form is too vague, too easy to hide.

Movies set in our world, for example, should be allowed to show real cars, real phones, etc. But that is nigh impossible to prevent from becoming a fight for getting your product placed. And lots of similar places.

It might be possible to outlaw ads targeted more narrowly than a bit of content (i.e. advertisers have to choose, ahead of publication, what content to put their ads next to.) Combining this with banning some of the more direct advertising might work. Though perhaps a world where advertising is purely done through product placement is also horribly distopian.