there'd never be any advertising ever because marketers since the beginning of time have been banking on "subliminally screened in".
What they're banking on is in that brief moment of time that you have a perceived need for a product/service, you'll stumble across their ad and take their offer. It is very difficult (if not impossible) to establish need from the advertising side; it invariably is a realization of the prospective client/customer, who then seeks out a resource to satisfy that need.
Concerning the WSJ ads, expectation that 3-1/8 page ads are going to produce substantive fruit is a bit of a stretch, IMO. Especially on a stand-alone offering. Certainly there is a target audience for GO800 services that read the WSJ. But how many of them will see the ad, then recognize the offering, and then positively respond to that ad is going to be fairly small number. Print just doesn't work that way successfully, unless you are offering a two-for-one pizza coupon, or somesuch lowball offering.