* Moral and religious harm of advertising: Commercial advertisers sometimes include religious themes or use religious images or personages to sell products.
It is possible to do this in acceptable ways, but the practice is obnoxious and offensive when it involves exploiting religion or treating it flippantly.
* Cultural harm: Advertising also can have a corrupting influence upon culture and cultural values. All too often, advertising contributes to the invidious stereotyping of particular groups. This often is true of the way advertising treats women; and the exploitation of women, both in and by advertising, is a frequent, deplorable abuse.
Advertising can be tasteful and in conformity with high moral standards, and occasionally even morally uplifting, but it also can be vulgar and morally degrading. Frequently it deliberately appeals to such motives as envy, status seeking and lust. Today, too, some advertisers consciously seek to shock and titillate by exploiting content of a morbid, perverse, pornographic nature.