The whole commercials thing probably deserves to be split into its own thread because it strayed from the subject of this one.
Personally, I too think of myself as someone who wouldn't be influenced by them, at least not as a trigger to go out and buy something, but then if I was watching a movie at the cinema and we were planning to eat something afterwards, I could see how watching a McDonalds commercial might prime me to prefer that choice.
As a designer, a coder, and a generally picky human I find the audiovisual noise commercials add to my experience of the internet rather uncomfortable, so I block them whenever possible, to the point I didn't understand how Facebook made money until they briefly broke the blocking, at which point I started marking every commercial I saw as spam to show my displeasure.
But then, in other circumstances I find that I've developed a blindness to them.
It's funny, at some point I used to enjoy watching commercials at the cinema because I used to work at a studio that did the VFX for them and that was the only way to see my work, and make fun of other studios' work with my friends.
