> Informative ads, like a new movie being out in theaters, can actually be net-positive financially, at the expense of the strain on public attention.

It would be easy to avoid that strain, by segregating such informative ads into places where people can seek them out on their own. Have advertising be PULL, not PUSH. Unfortunately, this is the exact opposite of what the advertising industry wants (and really, what most companies want - everyone is happy with getting a little short-term advantage at the expense of everyone else and their own future).

So more or less enforcing the status quo. If you can't do push marketing, whatever people are used to will stay for much, much longer.

False premise, even more in the age of the internet. If you want to know what's the best x, where x is a phone, a flashlight, a toaster, then you can just google it anytime. In fact, it's very much the opposite: advertising enforces the status quo, since the biggest companies will be able to promote their product at a massive scale (bombardment is a better word) and monopolize attention. Small businesses get squat.

But that's not a problem, IMO. If something was good enough before, it's likely good enough still. If it stops being good enough, people will be prompted to look for alternatives, which they'll then discover. Given how it's nearly impossible to satisfy human beings, they'll start looking for options sooner rather than later.

> how can businesses may become known?

Some argue all advertising should be banned. If that were to occur, the search burden would shift to consumers. We'd subscribe to curators like the Consumer Report or Wirecutter, storekeepers, et cetera and let them do the searching on our behalf.

This article considers something weaker. No public advertising. No billboards. Direct mail, storefront displays, in-store advertising, et cetera are still permitted.

> Direct mail, storefront displays, in-store advertising, et cetera are still permitted.

Direct mail is the worst form of advertising, from a personal perspective and from an environmental perspective. You're littering directly onto others, and forcing them to deal with trash you created in the vain hope that some of them decide to act on that trash.

It all ought to be marked "Return To Sender" and placed back into the mail stream, so the original sender has to deal with disposal. Forcing entities to internalize negative externalities is the only way to stop them from creating those externalities to begin with.