Consumer Conspiracy

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• Car filters that claim they'll add miles to your gas's performance, but Big Oil doesn't want you to know about them. In principle, it makes sense; if cars were super-efficient, less gas would be sold, meaning less money for Big Oil. In practice, it's idiotic; anything that involves magnets or forcefields won't work because magnets do not work that way, anything that "modifies the airflow for better performance" is pointless on modern cars because of computerized fuel injection, which isn't nearly as reliant on how the air moves to work, and devices that plug into the cigarette lighter won't be able to do anything but light up.^note About the only magic gadgets that do work are "OBD-II injectors" that are available for some car models, usually expensive German cars; however, they're usually sold for performance, not fuel economy, and are thus not cheap themselves (and definitely not As Seen on TV fodder).
• Credit Counseling/Debt Consolidation services "the credit card companies don't want you to know about". Almost all legitimate credit counseling services are non-profits that are either directly funded or recommended by lenders, since they'd much rather you work out a deal than declare bankruptcy (in which case they'd get nothing), and rarely if ever charge for their services. Someone promising to completely erase your debt or "reset" your credit history, especially if they want a fee to do so, is likely engaging in fraud and may end up getting you in trouble.
  • A variant in the UK is ads for debt write-off services. These claim to be able to write off all debts taken out before 2007, either "thanks to a recent law change" or due to a "government scheme". All of this is lies; the worst that could be done is the debts are found unenforceable on a technicality, which is substantially different from a write off (the debt not being enforceable just means they can't take you to court over it, however you still owe the money and the bank can still mark you as having defaulted). Worse still, judges in cases that have gone to court have seen right through the intentions of people trying these technicalities and turned them down. Oh yeah, and this service costs money.
• A variant is that the advertiser is keeping the information secret from their own management: "We will offer these low prices until our boss catches on," "While the finance department is on vacation we can offer these low prices," or (for radio ads) "Our boss is away so we can give away these really cool prizes". This requires some Willing Suspension of Disbelief to work — normally, buying from someone that's admittedly deceiving their boss would be iffy at best, but since they're being honest to you about it, it can't be that bad!
• Especially during bleak economic times, this shows up in commercials attempting to sell "investors' kits" for the purchasing of stable commodities, particularly gold (at least in the United States). The pitch is that you're part of a wise secret club that's using information that those Wall Street fat cats don't want you to know about in order to make yourself recession-proof.
• A lot of small businesses claim to be the area's "best-kept secret!" The implication seems to be that the only reason they haven't become world famous is because the locals don't want to share it with the entire rest of the world.
• Ads or Infomercials that claim that the "secret" to making money is by selling timeshares. What they don't tell you is that timeshares don't appreciate in value the way that homes do: what you're literally buying is time at a resort, not anything tangible. Timeshares are a great investment in happy memories, vacations to your favorite spot, time spent with loved ones, etc., and they can be good for people who want to have a vacation home but don't want to deal with maintaining a second or third home, but they don't involve owning any actual property, so they're not a good financial investment.
• An increasingly common presence on the web is how the cost of various services such as equity release, retirement homes, funerals or whatever "might surprise you", suggesting that you are surely paying a great cost for these things now and you would save hundreds or possibly thousands if you just click on this link. These are quite often location-based so you can see an advert extolling the virtue of the cheap service in your home area only to see the exact same advert with a different location if you travelled somewhere, casting doubt on the validity of these apparently cheap services in the first place.
• Many products (books, learning courses, etc.) advertising how to "beat the casinos" and turn a profit from gambling are sponsored by casinos themselves.
• Ads for a carefully-unspecified product online love to claim that "<Retailer> (frequently Amazon) hates it when members do this, but can't stop them!" They're trying to imply that there's some clever trick you can do to get a lower price from that retailer, but the Fridge Logic there is obvious — if Amazon (or whoever) noticed customer behavior that they didn't like, they would absolutely stop it. What's actually being advertised is a browser extension that's crammed with adware and spyware that purports to show you if a product you're browsing is available for a lower price elsewhere.
• Shady ads for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency brokers that claim "The [your country here] Central Bank/Government does not want you to know about this way to gain money" or something alike, and that may even falsify websites of newspapers, TV channels, etc. disappearing when they're reported just to come back later with a different name later. You can be sure was it true millionaires would abound, goverments would have stepped up to control such methods with legislation including to get taxes from them, and especially people behind such ads would not need such kind of sites and even the use false testimonies up to those of famous celebrities, politicians, etc.
• With the rise of online advertising, there's been a lot of Clickbait ads that all follow a similar format:
  • Describing their product as "one weird trick" or "one weird hack" to quickly solve a major problem (wrinkled skin, yellow teeth, Weight Woes, chronic health conditions, high utility bills, high taxes, low pensions, crippling debt)
  • Claiming that it was discovered by an average layperson (usually a stay-at-home mother)
  • Saying that The Government/Predatory Big Pharma/MegaCorps "HATE" the inventor, complete with CAPS LOCK
  • Minimal graphic design and Stylistic Suck to make the ad seem like it was made by a passionate amateur

Specific Advertisements

• Kevin Trudeau's "X They Don't Want You To Know About" series of books and infomercials. While pretty much every All-Natural Snake Oil peddler has made grandiose claims about being suppressed by "Big Pharma" and the FDA, Trudeau is one of the few who got called on his schemes while he was still selling vitamins. Because of those schemes, selling books is about the only thing he can do now—anything else would land him in jail again, due to restrictions put on him by the FTC and the SEC.^note And landed in jail again he has. In March 2014 Trudeau was sentenced to 10 years in prison for criminal contempt for violating prior court orders regarding claims in his infomercials.
• A law firm that specializes in disability rights literally starts with "I'm going to tell you a government secret."
• Matthew Lesko, AKA "That guy in a suit borrowed from The Riddler" claims his book's full of money the US government's giving away and how to get it. There's only two problems with this: First, most of the information he's selling is in publications you can get for free from the government, and those documents are not secret in the slightest.^note The government even had their own free catalog for some of these programs in the 1970s and 1980s, and they made sure you knew about it, too; PSAs for the Consumer Information Catalog were very common back then. Second, the reason most people don't know about these programs is that most people can't use them; they're meant for corporations, small businesses, and other organizations seeking grant money or startup capital. They often involve significant work in putting an application together, and also in subsequent reports to prove to the government that you are achieving the things that the grant is meant to promote. If you were looking to start a business, it might be useful, but you'd probably be better off going directly to the SBA for assistance.
• From the Cable/Satellite Mudslinging file, DirecTV "hacks into" various cable channels encouraging alternative methods of viewing "that the cable company doesn't want you to know about". Since the channels themselves retain national advertising time, they are free to take ads from whoever they want. But this also means that it airs on non-cable televisions, in which cases it makes a lot less sense.
• Newsmax and other right-leaning websites have several advertisements about "Secrets liberals don't want you to know". Weirdly, you rarely see the opposite on Democratic Underground (though they have plenty of other "Group X hates this" advertisements, just none with "Secrets conservatives don't want you to know.")
• The "Language professors hate him!" ads for the Pimsleur method. Dr. Paul Pimsleur was a real person (who died well before such ads were made) who developed a real language learning method that many people do find effective, and there are plenty of language professors who do appreciate Pimsleur and his work. Some of his ideas are still the basis of foreign language acquisition research today. He did not, however, make any ridiculous claims like it being possible to learn a language in ten days.
• Disney's own timeshare program, the Disney Vacation Club, is advertised as "Disney's Best Kept Secret". Again, this is what the advertisements say. The ones that Disney paid for themselves in the first place, and then plastered all over their own theme parks. It's almost like they're not actually trying to keep the existence of this program a secret at all...

• Saw X: Cecilia Pederson and her father Finn pose as doctors who designed a revolutionary cancer cure, which they claim the pharmaceutical industry is trying to suppress in order to keep making money on expensive treatments that simply prolong people's suffering. In truth, they're con artists who put on an elaborate show for their patients but don't actually do anything, and had already been run out of their home country of Norway after their scam was exposed there. When John Kramer finds out that the treatment he spent thousands of dollars on and flew down to Mexico for was nothing but snake oil, he kidnaps Cecilia and her assistants, a bunch of local hoodlums who she hired off the street to pose as doctors and nurses, and forces them into his traps — some of which required using the medical knowledge they falsely claimed to have.

• The Lone Gunmen: Deconstructed in "Like Water for Octane". Particularly, the conspiracy theory that there exists an unlimited source of clean, free energy that the oil companies don't want you to know about because they want to protect the fat profits they make selling petroleum. The protagonists are searching for a mythical water-powered car that was allegedly suppressed by the energy industry for this reason. When they find the daughter of the car's inventor, she reveals to them that he destroyed it himself once he realized the hidden costs: namely, it would cause shortages of other finite resources as fuel that cost only a cent per gallon led to a new wave of consumerism and suburban sprawl. Including oil, because that's still needed to make asphalt roads, plastics, and synthetic rubber. Turns out, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and there's always a catch when something sounds too good to be true. The energy industry didn't want to destroy the car, they wanted to put it into production in order to keep the consumerist gravy train going even after peak oil.

• The Simpsons: In "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo", Chuck Garabedian extolls about stuff "Wall Street won't tell you [about saving money]". Later on, the family finds him rooting through their garbage; he responds "You fat cats didn't finish your plankton; now it's mine!" Plankton that's well past the expiration date, mind you.

• Dropout: In this issue of Employee Manuals called "Throw them a bone". Right after the "As confusing as possible" part.