A 2017 blog post by the chief global analyst of Kantar Millward Brown, a marketing firm, notes "that average ad loads on national television in the U.S. continued to creep upwards from 10.4 minutes per hour in December 2014, to 10.9 minutes in December 2016". Although the increase is less than 5%, he suggests "marketers should be concerned because the evidence suggests that more clutter is a bad thing for brands." Examples Most sports venues, amateur and professional, have especially experienced a noticeable increase of advertising since the 1980s. In ice hockey, most rinks added advertisements to the side of the rinks during the late 1980s, and in 2010, advertisements have been placed on the Plexiglass in NHL arenas. Also, the introduction of digital scoreboards has allowed more easily accessible advertisements to be used. Since the 1990s advertising during television programs outside of commercial breaks/intros/outros has also been noticeably more present. More recently, small animated ads have been placed as banners near the bottom of the viewing area. After deregulation of cable television in the United States in 1971, the service was sold as an ad-free alternative to over-the-air broadcasting. As it grew more popular, however, ads were gradually introduced. Earthstamp, founded in 2009, creates forms that can be used to imprint ads on the sand at beaches, but these could be a nuisance or even illegal on public land. In 2011, a clothing company in New Zealand promoted its short-shorts by installing indented plates on bus stop benches, imprinting its advertising on women's thighs and a Japanese firm registered "1300 young women" willing to rent their thighs for ad space in 2012. Once the last major US league to hold out, the NBA implemented a jersey advertisement program for the 2017-2018 season, which continues as of November 2022. Organisations fighting ad-creep Adbusters Commercial Alert See also Criticism of advertising Transpromotional References External links Commercial alert "Creeping Commercials: Ads Worming Way Into TV Scripts" Advertising