Pardon me for the tangent, but I suspect that at least part of the issue is that people tend to think they are not affected by "bad information" (eg.: propagand

Pardon me for the tangent, but I suspect that at least part of the issue is that people tend to think they are not affected by "bad information" (eg.: propaganda, mis/dis-information, information-noise...). I think most people would probably intuitively reject the idea that they could be influenced by their information consumption. So I don't think it's that surprising that the full costs of advertising are not taken very seriously; it's much easier to see the commercial motivation for advertising.