its true - advertising is everywhere!

The Statesman worries about advertising oversaturation in "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's an ad?"

Asked to name public places where there is no advertising, consumer activist Gary Ruskin racks his brain. Churches and other houses of worship, he says eventually. National parks. The U.S. flag.

He sadly admits that the list just keeps growing shorter.

Ads and product placements have invaded books, films, public restrooms, city buses and music videos.

"It's an assault from which there is no respite," said Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, a consumer awareness group based in Portland, Ore. "Ads won't leave us alone. There are fewer and fewer sanctuaries from aggressive huckstering."

Advertisers say they've been forced to become more aggressive in a time when the public can no longer be reached simply by running commercials on the three TV networks. Thanks to cable and popular devices such as TiVo, an increasingly segmented public is more likely to skip commercials than to watch them. TiVo and other technologies allow people to record television programs and delete the ads.

As a result, advertisers are using new technologies -- touch-controlled video screens in the back seats of cabs are one example -- to reach a captive audience.

Apparently, even the Pope is sponsored, or he was at a pray-in held in May at a Madrid's airport.

Some 500,000 attendees were given backpacks filled with goodies that included vouchers for food from McDonald's. Don't forget to say grace over your fried burger.

Schools have sponsors too, as public funding only stretches so far. Not all people think this is a bad thing, Joel Ehrlich, president of Youth Marketing International said to the Statesman:

"We're not in the classroom giving out something that tells kids to go out and buy Care Bears," he said. "The company does get exposure, but it is a very subtle, very soft sell."