As the hardworking staff diligently perused its costly home-delivered newspapers the past few days, we’ve encountered a number of full-page ads that have left us, well, bemused.

Start with this two-page spread in the Sunday New York Times Pride 2017 Special Section.

That Mass Mutual ad was mirrored in the Boston Sunday Globe A section.

We’ve always found it odd that a news organization would allow advertisers to appropriate its banner or editorial content in their ads, but maybe that’s just us.

More puzzling was this full-page ad, also in Sunday’s Times.

The ad, tagged by the Internet Defense League, was paid for by an outfit called Private Internet Access, as detailed here.

Private Internet Access shines the cat signal for net neutrality

Today, Private Internet Access is shining the cat signal with a full page ad in the New York Times to gain support for the Net Neutrality Day of Action on July 12th that Fight for the Future and other organizations are planning at Battle for the Net.

We, the people of the Internet, have stopped these draconian attempts to close our access to the open internet in the past with the Internet Blackout, and we must do so again each time. Whether you represent a company, a community, or an individual, join us at the Internet Defense League for this and future actions.

Here’s the thing: Any ad that features just a graphic and a website makes the audience, rather than the marketer, do all the work. Which  the vast majority of Sunday’s New York Times readers would likely not do.

As legendary adman David Ogilvy noted, “[on] the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

The Cat Signal ad has no headline and no body copy. You do the math.

Finally, this ThirdLove ad in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal had the headscratching staff totally befuddled.

First of all, a bra ad in the Journal? On B6? Seriously?

But beyond that . . . according to a piece in CNNMoney, “the Journal’s subscriber base . . . is overwhelmingly wealthy older men: 79% of Journal subscribers are male, 88% are above the age of 50 and 70% make over $100,000 a year.”

And, presumably, a very small percentage of them wear bras on a regular basis.

So why did ThirdLove choose the Journal?

We’ll give them a holler and ask.