If you think of advertising as being "see ad -> buy thing", well, it may have worked on you if you needed that thing. That's not a crazy idea right? Advertising

If you think of advertising as being "see ad -> buy thing", well, it may have worked on you if you needed that thing. That's not a crazy idea right? Advertising purely as a form of product discovery? Then, beyond that, you can get into the stuff that uses observations about basic human psychology. It might be arrogance to consider yourself above human weakness. You are probably familiar with the strategy of brand awareness? All else being equal you are more likely to purchase a product that is familiar to you. If you see an advertisement for a product, even if you try to form a negative emotional attachment immediately, the emotional tenor will fade but the familiarity will remain. I'm not going to say every form of advertising is effective, probably a lot of the web stuff that can be gamed is gamed and thus less effective, but I'd be cautious assuming it won't work on you (or anyone else for that matter).