Holy shit, somebody actually figured it out.
TV advertising itself isn't a bad idea, but you don't trust a commercial to help make your buy decision. What TV and other ads do is generate awareness and hype that makes people interested. That's important; ask the indie developers how many games they sell when nobody knows their name. It's the same problem as the music industry: there are lots of great bands, but until they become well-known, they spend their time playing small gigs in bars.
But once people start hearing about the game and the hype builds, fancy-looking commercials aren't going to help much. Part of the reason is the industry's fault: the ads never show what it's like to play the real game. A lot of times they just show rendered cinematics, but even when they do show an in-game view, it's always some close-up fly-by or other similar situation that the player never gets to see themselves. We gamers know this, so we take the trailers with a huge grain of salt. We know that even the best looking game can be a steaming pile of bad controls and plotless meandering.
I really hope they do use this money to improve their games and not just the graphics. I also hope they don't use it to pay off review sites (*coughIGN*).
Word of mouth has always been the most trustworthy source of recommendations, because they are made by people you choose to trust and who have no reason to try and trick you into buying something you won't like. This is why previews, betas, and demos are so important: they allow you and your friends to try the game and get excited about it before it even comes out. Case in point: everybody at my office has preordered StarCraft II so they can play the beta, after one guy showed it to everybody at lunch time. I even preordered it and I wasn't even originally planning to buy it. Seeing is believing and it's a lot cheaper than 30 second commercial spots.
