[MockObject]

This "association" business smells like a logical fallacy to me. Since when has advertisement even implied endorsement of nearby content?

If I see a billboard on a bus station, what is the advertiser endorsing here?

What about a magazine ad? Reasonable people assume the advertiser supports every view expressed therein?

If I happened to see an ad on a website with user generated content, would I really think the advertiser endorsed each post?

Sorry, this argument is fallacious. Reasonable people do not make these conclusions.

[GenericPoster]

> Since when has advertisement even implied endorsement of nearby content?

It's not an endorsement. People make associations all the time consciously or not. There are obviously positive and negative associations. And if it's within your power to reduce the negative associations which might impact the perception of your product then why won't you do it? Advertising is primarily an appeal towards emotion not logic. It's manipulative by nature.

I don't know what I'm saying that's so unreasonable.

Also, I can't control whether some homeless person pees next to my billboard, but if my competitors also have billboards in the area then I may still come out on top. But if I can move my weight to move those homeless people elsewhere, preferably to my competitors billboards then I'll do it. This isn't a moral argument.

[MockObject]

Because there's no such association.

Nobody associates Coke with the reek of bum piss because they encountered a messy billboard. This is simply an unreal line of argument.

It certainly would be interesting if we lived in a world where advertisers refused to run ads in stadiums of losing teams, ran their ads only on sunny days, and only on positive, uplifting tv episodes while entirely avoiding shows about serial killers. We can fantasize, but the actual world has never worked this way.