Advertising, while providing a linkage between sales and consumption, helps promote rational consumption patterns by expanding the scope of information for consumers facing an ever-increasing array of consumption decisions. In so doing, advertising promotes competition among suppliers and sellers, thereby improving market transparency. Intrinsically, advertising can influence the instantaneous decisions made by consumers, and because of this peculiar feature of advertising, ensuring fair advertising practices is a policy issue of great importance. Concurrently, discerning whether the amount of advertising, which is determined by the profit motive of advertisers, is socially appropriate or whether this amount constitutes a waste of scarce resources is a necessary and in-dispensable consideration in establishing a public policy to respond to the mounting deluge of advertising. Although the Fair Trade Act and numerous other related laws are being enforced with regard to advertising, it may be difficult to say that a unified, practicable and logical basis for regulating the variegated and complex forms of advertising has been established. This paper examines the various theoretical arguments on the welfare effects of advertising as a rationale to justify regulation from the viewpoint of economics. In this manner, this paper helps define the essential nature of advertising and seeks to present a rational approach toward the regulation of advertising.