The average American sees over 3,000 advertising messages a day. If you fill out a warranty card, get divorced, buy a home, get listed in a school directory, enter a sweepstakes, purchase an item from a catalog, file an insurance claim, or perform a myriad of other everyday activities, some company somewhere makes a record of this fact and sells it to marketers for profit. In today's world, your buying patterns, reading interests, political affiliations, and travel and entertainment preferences are being tracked. This data is entered into a database that can be filtered to help marketers target you. This contributes to a glut of mail and telemarketing calls you don't want and to the commercial exploitation of your profile, for which you get nothing in return.
Advertising is a vicious circle of waste and abuse.
Consumers are not receiving benefit from marketers when their personal data is used and sold without their permission and marketers are wasting money on advertisements that consumers don't want.