[badpun]

If I were king, all ads would have to be black text on white background, containing ONLY the name of the product/service, its description and advertised merits. The description would have to consist of well-defined and falsifiable statements only.

[sokoloff]

Prediction: in your kingdom, product names would evolve to become "World's Best Hair Tonic" with "World's Best" being the company's brand/trade name...

[e_proxus]

If I remember correctly, calling products "best" or similar is illegal in Sweden unless you can point to verifiable neutral source such as product tests etc. I'm sure it's corruptible to some extent, but at least it is possible to prevent these things at large.

[russh]

Except it would be: World's Best(tm) Hair Tonic -- I think I could parse that correctly.

[wolrah]

What Google AdWords used to be, just plain text that was generally pretty relevant to whatever you were viewing, clearly defined as an ad.

[badpun]

Yep that was pretty cool, I respected Google for it.

[bartread]

> If I were king, all ads would have to be black text on white background, containing ONLY the name of the product/service, its description and advertised merits. The description would have to consist of well-defined and falsifiable statements only.

Sorry, but for a lot of products this approach is simply ridiculous. I want to know what I'm buying looks like before I buy it in many cases. E.g., clothes, sportswear, footwear, furniture, electric guitars - even food.

[badpun]

You’re right - we should allow one photo - presenting product only (i.e. without pictures of scandily clad women used to sell for example wallpaper paste, as is common in my country), against a clear background.

[satvikpendem]

If you go to your local supermarket, you will see many branded items with varied fonts and pictures. This packaging is essentially an ad for the item. If you removed that, which you could do, as some brands like Brandless have done, people would not know what to buy. The packaging itself provides value. So too with ads online.

[jachee]

And the product's non-obfuscated cost.