- An ad with an attractive, middle-aged woman and her overweight husband. The husband displays a comical ignorance of the product being advertised and its benefits, and his wife gives him a sort of no-nonsense look. A look that says, “I realize the situation is humorous, but you need to get it together. Please. For me.” He is destroying her life.

- An ad where a famous person assures you that the product is reliable and good.

- An ad for a car where the car is doing cool maneuvers that you have neither the occasion nor the ability to duplicate.

- An ad where a trustworthy-looking man, graying at the temples, well-dressed, walks slowly toward you. You’re not sure what the product in question is yet, but for a few fleeting moments, you feel safe. Then he mentions stock portfolio management. You don’t know what that means.

- An ad where the product and its leading competitor are presented side-by-side, and they engage in a funny little dialogue that suggests consumers who purchased the inferior product are always sad.

- Where are you right now, geographically speaking? Would you rather go somewhere else? An ad telling you how to do that.

- An ad with hang gliding!

- An ad for the latest mobile device. The setting is an independent (or “indie”) rock concert, but it quickly shifts to a funky-looking art gallery, then a rooftop barbecue where some of the burgers have kale on them, then the peak of a mountain, then a laundromat, then a subway platform, then your childhood home, where you had no worries and to which you pay the occasional visit but may never truly return.

- An ad with men in their 50s and 60s fly fishing.

- An ad for orange juice that exaggerates the role orange juice plays in most people’s lives.

- An ad where it’s just text and no actors. The point being that the product is so vital that a dramatic presentation of its benefits would be unnecessary and, in a weird way, offensive.

- An ad with a laid-back, twentysomething man and his attractive but uptight girlfriend. The man is trying to enjoy the product in question with his similarly laid-back buddies. Light beer, say. But his girlfriend is PMSing because she wants to do something lame like watch a movie together, since it seems like forever since they’ve had any real alone time, and maybe this is just her being paranoid, but things don’t feel the way they used to. In three years, they will marry. He will destroy her life.

- An ad praising you for your refusal to be swayed by other, lesser ads.

- How do you look right now, physically speaking? Are you happy with everything? An ad telling you how to fix that.

- An ad that stirs a longing deep within you, one you didn’t even know was there. At first it’s a vague, almost tingling desire, but it soon becomes intoxicating. You need the ad — not so much the product being advertised, but the ad itself. You come to enjoy the ad more than the programming you intended to watch, and now you call your loved ones into the room when it plays. You deliberately seek the ad out on the Internet, and you click the “replay” icon without thinking. The ad visits you in your dreams. You worship the Ad. But the Ad is an illusion, of course, and this will not dawn on you until it is far too late. Your spouse no longer recognizes you, your children are become alien. The Ad is all there is. It’s for deodorant.

- An ad with Jeff Goldblum.