The primary purpose of advertising is, of course, to sell the products being touted. The first objective of the advertiser, therefore, is to get our attention. Advertisers utilize various methods to accomplish that goal.

One way is to be as loud and obnoxious as possible. That is the tact used by a company called NerdWallet which, among other things, will find us credit cards that best meet our needs.

So, what do we need to do? The announcer tells us that we must: “Turn to the Nerds!” And he tells us that numerous times in each ad!

Another tactic advertisers use to get our attention is to empl...