Nobody in the comment section is apparently reading the paper, because the only subcategory that reached p<0.05 significance was newspaper advertising expenditure.

When they stretch the p-value threshold for significance to p<0.1, they claim magazine advertising expenditure reached that threshold.

TV, Radio, and Cinema advertising did not reach significance even at the expanded p<0.1 threshold.

The methodology of the paper is also not great at all. They looked at changes in advertising expenditure and changes in happiness measures and then tried to correlate the two.

It's not just that people haven't read enough of the article to see how limited the evidence is, they haven't even read enough (three paragraphs) to understand the mechanism by which the author argues that ads make people unhappy: by making them aware of things they want but can't afford.

But this also applies to a lot of media that people consume on purpose, TikTok, Instagram, TV and magazines about the rich and famous.

It implies a curious understanding of what makes people happy. Why do people follow rich celebrities on instagram rather then homeless people, to feel better by comparison? Is it because they don't know what really makes them happy or is a relative measure of happiness perhaps insufficient?

This makes every single comment irrelevant/false?

The sum of total advertising expenditure includes TV, Radio, and Cinema which did reach the threshold. It's harder to get the significance threshold when the data is split apart than on the whole.

I read the paper, there’s tons of interesting research showing advertising CAUSING certain effects (oftentimes good ones!) but, what’s the point of participating with that substance? People want to participate in a hand up-and-down motion on circularly adjacent partners about “advertising bad,” not learn something.