Research on advertising and public policy has been both plentiful and cross-disciplinary. Despite the vast knowledge base on the topic, an understanding of this body of research from different perspectives has not been achieved. This paper examines all articles on advertising and public policy that were published in five primary journals over a 24-year period. Categorical descriptive information on these 130 articles is presented along with a conceptual model that serves as a framework to understand the existing literature from the different disciplines and to provide a perspective on the pragmatic potential for the role of that literature in actual decision making on public policy. The literature is reviewed and perspectives on the future are offered.