Is it really "advertising", or is it just garbage?

I don't understand what's going on in the world today. People come up with the strangest commercials in an effort to get us to buy stuff--but most of the commercials I see now are actually making me want to AVOID the stuff they're trying to sell. Case in point: My daughter and I were watching Nickelodian... There was a commercial for Juicy Fruit, where this guy is playing "fetch" with his pet ant (it's a giant ant, about the size of a big dog). He's all "Good boy" and stuff like that. Gross enough right there. Then, he decides he wants a piece of Juicy Fruit gum... the ant looks at it, comes closer and starts kind of stroking the guy and making whiny puppy noises (WEIRD and scary), and then the guy finally pushes the ant's tentacle away and says "No! Bad boy!" Then the ant knocks the guy down. The guy gets up and runs to his car and gets inside. The ant rips the door off the car and yanks the guy out of it. (I'm freaking out now and my daughter is caught between being scared and being intrigued.) The next thing you see is the ant yanking the guy (who's still holding onto the piece of Juicy Fruit) down a giant ant-hill. They end the commercial with "Want Sweet?" It was all shades of wrong!!! I can't decide what bothers me more--the fact that this commercial was actually considered good advertising by the people who put that stuff on TV; or the fact that I was more disturbed by the commercial than my 5-year-old daughter was! Talk about being desensitized!