• Fortune, Friday, March 20, 2009 11:45 AM

Former MTV and AOL Networks CEO Bob Pittman thinks there's one glaring omission from the nearly $800 billion stimulus package: ad incentives for corporations that have slashed their marketing budgets.

"To get people spending again, and the economy moving, the government needs to provide help for businesses in America to advertise their products and services," Pittman writes in an opinion piece for Fortune Magazine. He adds: "There's a reason that America is the largest consumer market in the world: It also happens to be the largest advertising market in the world."

Is consumer spending directly related to how much corporations spend on advertising? Well, one thing is for sure, corporations radically cut back on advertising and other expenses in a recession. Pittman argues that in order for consumer spending to return to healthy levels, corporations need to start advertising again. As such, an advertising stimulus would greatly help the situation, he says. What kind of stimulus are we talking about? Well, ad spending is already tax-deductible; "a bigger help," Pittman says, "would be a tax credit for ad spending up to some percentage of prior-year sales."

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