Originally Posted by JCL

Don't know about a consensus, but my definition is a tire that has less money spent on design, testing, manufacturing, and quality control. Those are tires that are designed to compete at a certain price point. Nothing wrong with that, especially if you are selling a vehicle soon and just want something to keep the rims off the pavement. But install hundreds of tires in a general repair shop (not a tire dealer) and see which brands have more returns, which ones usually take more weight to balance, which ones the manufacturer stands behind more readily in the event of both warrantable and non-warrantable problems, which ones have tread separation issues, and which ones customers come back and ask most often for "the same as I have now" and you end up with a stratification of brands, with some higher than others. From my experience, I can't tell you the order from one to ten, but I know that the two I mentioned are often in the top 3. Results vary with tread, model, size, and use, but I believe that statistically, I am better going with one of those two. For winter tires, I also like Blizzaks. And I had a killer set of Dunlop Wintersport M3s, which I would buy again, but I don't have a large enough sample size to base a general recomendation on.

I can't comment on the advertising question; I don't recall any tire ads, except that Michelin has Bibendum. I am sure they all advertise, I just don't know who does more or less as I don't watch or read them.