Having spent several years working in advertising, I can no longer simply watch t.v. or flip through a magazine.
I now know that everything—from casting to level of retouching to the color of shovel a child is holding in a shot—is a belabored choice (by the way, did anyone else notice the beautiful lighting in the opening sequence of the new Harry Potter film?).
Will it soon be this way for all of us? Check out this Slate article about creative director Donald Gunn and his twelve kinds of ads, circa 1978. With his guidelines for categorizing commercials, perhaps Gunn was a better ad-man than we think.