All the people watch commercials, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was a correlation between the kind of person that can watch stupid reality shows for hours on end and the kind of person who watches those ads and it actually translates into them spending money on the things in the ads.
Probably so. I don't know if home shopping channels are still on the air, but there were people who watched those religiously. I remember when TV switched over to digital broadcast, there was a big to-do in the town I lived in because a bunch of people watched a low-power broadcast station that broadcast a home shopping channel 24/7 and they wouldn't be able to watch it anymore since it couldn't afford the upgrade.