The question is: where did this pattern come from? Why buy too many ads in the first place? Corporations are supposed to be maximizing profits, and yet we hear

The question is: where did this pattern come from? Why buy too many ads in the first place? Corporations are supposed to be maximizing profits, and yet we hear they are wasting tons of money on ads. Why don't some of them would learn not to and bring massive returns to shareholders? Some thoughts: - A recent comment regarding a travel agency reflected that execs would check the stats on the most popular travel agency every week, and wanted to be at the top. They would therefore run ad campaigns at the end of the week in order to drive themselves to the top, even if the ads were a net loss in revenue. This suggests that a lot of advertising is aimed at people who are already invested in the company: execs and shareholders, who see the ads and think it is reflective of how well the company is doing (which, in a way, it is: it signals they have extra money to waste on advertising) - I recently saw a clip from a Jobs interview, where he contrasted non-monopolies, which are run by product people, with monopolies (like Xerox and IBM), which are run by "sales and marketing" people. Presumably some ads are effective. Controlling the ads that are effective gives marketing power over the company, in the monopoly case. Having attained this power, they then use it to route the company's spare revenue to buy still more ads. This has the interesting implication (perhaps obvious) that a monopoly is bad for shareholders (as well as consumers), who are being robbed of the revenue now being spent on ads.