> > But you are right that in aggregate a non-zero amount of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers. > If a company's only source of revenue is custo

> > But you are right that in aggregate a non-zero amount of the advertising costs get passed on to consumers. > If a company's only source of revenue is customers, then, by definition, customers are paying for all of advertising. > > As an individual those services are free. > Perhaps those are free to you, personally. > Yet, on a global scale the sum is zero. If a company spends $$$ on advertising I'll eventually pay a fraction of it, directly or indirectly. So you just repeated my points, but worse. For example, it is not true that the customers are paying for all of the advertising. The way to determine what customers are paying for is to see how the world with advertiising compares with the world without advertising, and there's many possibilities. A) with advertising the company revenues are higher by the same amount on a per-unit basis (companies pass all cost to consumers), B) with advertising company costs are higher by the same amount on a per-unit basis (meaning the companies pass all cost to shareholders in the form of lower margins and lower return on equity, or related metric), C) something in between. So it's not true that necessarily customers are paying for all of the advertising.