The Nightmare of Dream Advertising

Abstract

Advertisers are attempting to market to us while we dream. This is not science fiction, but rather a troubling new reality. Using a technique dubbed “targeted dream incubation” (TDI), companies have begun inserting commercial messages into people’s dreams. Roughly, TDI works by: (1) creating an association during waking life using sensory cues (e.g., a pairing of sounds, visuals, or scents); and (2) as the subject is drifting off to sleep, the association is again introduced with the goal of triggering dreams with related subject matter. Based on a 2021 American Marketing Association survey, 77% of 400 companies surveyed plan to experiment with dream advertising — or what this Article calls “branding dreams” — by 2025.

As a therapeutic technique, TDI is being found by sleep and dream researchers to have various benefits such as improving sleep quality, stimulating creativity, and treating addiction. However, when TDI is hijacked by advertisers for commercial purposes, serious harms emerge. These problems are most obvious when branding dreams is done in connection with addictive products. But health, privacy, liberty, economic, and cultural concerns also exist more broadly. In fact, dozens of sleep and dream researchers have signed an open letter calling for “new protective policies” regarding dream advertising, lest “dreams become just another playground for corporate advertisers.”

Such specifically tailored regulations would be welcome and helpful. However, this Article suggests that — at least in certain instances — branding dreams might already run afoul of existing subliminal and deceptive advertising regulations. To this end, the Article advances two claims. First, dream advertising appears to fit the definition of subliminal messaging: advertisements “existing or functioning below the threshold of consciousness.” Second, particularly if branding dreams is considered a novel method of subliminal advertising, some forms of dream advertising may be ripe for enforcement as “deceptive acts or practices” under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act.