Animals are widely used in advertising and marketing, often sourced from entertainment animal suppliers with variable welfare standards, and their use normalises certain human-animal relationships.
Animals in advertising face welfare risks from the performance demands of working in unfamiliar, high-stimulus environments and from training methods that may involve aversive techniques to achieve reliable on-demand behaviour. Beyond the direct welfare of the animals used, advertising has an indirect welfare impact through the associations it creates: adverts featuring exotic animals as pets normalise demand for inappropriate species; adverts showing primates in humanised roles can drive illegal capture from wild populations; adverts featuring dogs in inappropriate situations can promote irresponsible pet ownership. The welfare case for phasing out wild and exotic animal use in advertising — particularly where CGI alternatives are available — rests on both direct welfare grounds and the indirect harm of normalising exploitative human-animal relationships.