Since I posted about the Pakistan McDonald's commercials, it actually brought something to my mind: I grew up around the time of what Wikipedia calls the "Pakistan–United States skirmishes" (I don't know why Wikipedia uses that word, but whatever), and whenever I'd see Pakistan on TV, it was always warzones with dust and demolished buildings - and those commercials, even though I was just there for the funny mondegreens and bad animation, exposed me to the idea that Pakistan is actually well, a country, where children play Sonic games and eat McDonald's, just like the UK, and not some kind of weird exotic island that exists solely for bad things to happen.
If if there is any argument for the value of preserving ephemera like commercials, that would probably be it.