It depends. Here in the UK we are sadly forced to watch roughly three to four minutes of 20-second commercials at a time when watching TV. However, this is fortunately limited to only every fifteen minutes or so of each show, and between shows. As I understand it, and having seen US television in Florida on holiday, you guys have perhaps 30 seconds to a minute of commercial at a time, but sadly have to sit through maybe four or five of these per 22-minute show (to push it up to half an hour in the schedule).
Anyway, the length of commercials means that I rapidly get bored when watching them, though nowadays at university I tend to watch TV online which means much fewer commercials on sites like Channel 4 OD or ITV Player. And it annoys me when they show the same commercials over and over again for a bunch of different shows on the same channel, because then I just get bored even quicker.
However, sometimes, adverts are done really well. Sadly these tend to be the sort shown before films at the cinema rather than on TV, so I only get to see the good ones once a week when I make my regular cinema visit. For example, there was an amazing one for chewing gum that wasn't on TV, but was on cinema screens, and was basically this really complex mind-porn thing that had elements of Tron, The Matrix, and games like Wipeout, but based around astronaut training. And I had the great joy to see this several times in 3D at the cinema, but it would have been nowhere near as good on the small screen.
Another one - a really nice little advert that shows a guy and a girl in bed one morning. They look at each other and do the whole cheesy sheepish smile thing, then proceed to continue smiling like that at each other while getting dressed. They have to track down all their clothes in turn through a whole UK market town, on main roads and near the docks, until eventually they wind up putting their jackets back on in a supermarket. They then smile again and walk in opposite directions with their trolleys. The idea is that they saw each other in the supermarket, fell instantly for each other, and were ripping off their clothes even on the way home before the sexy-time could start. The kicker? It's an advert for Lynx deodorant (Axe in the US). Again, a very clever, well filmed advert that I liked a lot.
So yeah, some adverts I do tend to like. But it has to be especially well made, or have a really nice twist or concept, for me to be interested. So the vast majority of stuff, I don't like. It's like Sturgeon's Law says - 90% of everything is shit. And that law applies to commercials just as much as it does everything else.
