it just feels completely pointless to advertise it any more
That's just it, though. I don't think they're trying to advertise it. It's more like positive reinforcement. They're planting seeds in peoples' brains. It's like how Apple always talk about the "new features" on their iPhones that have been standard on Android for a couple of years already. Even if Apple are often late to the party when it comes to the technology, they can still somehow convince their loyal customers that they're getting the latest and greatest thing (even when they aren't), so please don't look at the competition (who can actually offer something better).
Effectively, most people don't buy an iPhone because they saw the ad. Chances are, anyone paying attention to the ad was going to buy one anyway. The ad is only there to convince them not to check out the other options which are available to them. That's what Visa is doing, whilst playing word-association and saying stuff like "
Network", "
Signature", etc and hoping that they plant that seed and people associate those words with Visa. That way, when they eventually hear us talking about networks and signatures (even though we were talking about them first), everyone believes Visa are already giving them all they could ever want or need.
It's all mind-games.