I think you're trying to think about advertising in a direct suggestive manner, buy this, buy that. Sometimes they are this direct, but others are more subtle, trying to associate enjoyable sensory experience with their brand, in a bid you would associate these pleasing sensations later when exposed to the brand again and then motivate a purchase with the real psychological trigger being a step removed.

You'd think that food commercials would be straightforward, right? Show food, elicit hunger, "buy my sandwich", ka-tching. But these ads are shown at any time of the day, to any people, satiated or not. So you can be more subtle in order to catch everyone. Sure, you're showing food, but what if you showed food in an unconventionally esthetically pleasing way? What if picture-perfect food was, bear with me, literally flying?

Now that would be a sight to behold! Until the 3rd ad agency that ran the same idea because it's been working so well for their competitors, that is, but the deed is done. Food advertisement is now all about flying food, and not doing it would be considered marketing suicide.

Is it really working? No way to know, advertisement for brick-and-mortar shops and restaurants doesn't have the luxury of linking ad views with purchases, no conversion ratio to be extracted from tracking data. It is a little scary, but you know what would be scarier? Not running these ads, because everybody else is doing it, and Marketing has a budget anyway, extorted from upper management through sweet-talking learned in the priciest business schools.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm clearly not neurotypical.