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I'm actually curious if you have any sources or statistics to back this up. I'm not saying it's wrong, but I'd love to see some data on this. I suspect you're

I'm actually curious if you have any sources or statistics to back this up. I'm not saying it's wrong, but I'd love to see some data on this. I suspect you're almost surely right when it comes to the number of companies, but I'd be far more interested in seeing analysis on this broken down by volume of dollars / revenue. For instance, most (all?) professional and even college sports, TV shows, numerous web companies, etc. -- tons of ad revenue, though perhaps relatively small number of companies, but is why I'd be curious to see data on this if you know of any?

frostmatthew 12y ago
> I'd be far more interested in seeing analysis on this broken down by volume of dollars / revenue. We don't really need to filter companies that are solely or primarily dependent on advertising. We can compare the entire amount of money spent on advertising (which is a superset of what we're really looking for) versus everybody else (which is just total revenue minus advertising revenue) to see it's not even close. One source[1] for global ad spending puts it at $467 billion (for 2010), I couldn't find more recent hard data but another[2] estimates it at $581 billion for this year. Let's assume the estimate was right and round up to $600 billion. WalMart had revenue of $476.3 billion last year[3]. You can combine WalMart and any other company in the top 10 of Fortune's Global 500 and their combined revenue would exceed total advertising revenue[4]. The combined revenue of all 500 is $31.1 trillion[5], even if that included every penny of ad revenue it would still be a ratio of 50:1 [1] http://www.wpp.com/wpp/press/2011/dec/05/groupm-forecasts-global-ad-spending-to/ http://www.wpp.com/wpp/press/2011/dec/05/groupm-forecasts-gl... [2] http://www.statista.com/statistics/237797/total-global-advertising-revenue/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/237797/total-global-adver... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_Global_500 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_Global_500 [5] http://fortune.com/global500/wal-mart-stores-1/ http://fortune.com/global500/wal-mart-stores-1/
rpdillon 12y ago
Advertising dollars have to be less than what a company makes on the product advertised (at least over the long term, but probably in the short term as well). As such, it would be wholly unsustainable for advertising to be the dominant mechanism of revenue generation globally, since that would imply that companies are spending more on advertising than they could possibly receive from selling their goods and services. Maybe I'm misunderstanding...perhaps you were referring only to businesses selling access to a web service?

frostmatthew 12y ago

> I'd be far more interested in seeing analysis on this broken down by volume of dollars / revenue. We don't really need to filter companies that are solely or primarily dependent on advertising. We can compare the entire amount of money spent on advertising (which is a superset of what we're really looking for) versus everybody else (which is just total revenue minus advertising revenue) to see it's not even close. One source[1] for global ad spending puts it at $467 billion (for 2010), I couldn't find more recent hard data but another[2] estimates it at $581 billion for this year. Let's assume the estimate was right and round up to $600 billion. WalMart had revenue of $476.3 billion last year[3]. You can combine WalMart and any other company in the top 10 of Fortune's Global 500 and their combined revenue would exceed total advertising revenue[4]. The combined revenue of all 500 is $31.1 trillion[5], even if that included every penny of ad revenue it would still be a ratio of 50:1 [1] http://www.wpp.com/wpp/press/2011/dec/05/groupm-forecasts-global-ad-spending-to/ http://www.wpp.com/wpp/press/2011/dec/05/groupm-forecasts-gl... [2] http://www.statista.com/statistics/237797/total-global-advertising-revenue/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/237797/total-global-adver... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_Global_500 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_Global_500 [5] http://fortune.com/global500/wal-mart-stores-1/ http://fortune.com/global500/wal-mart-stores-1/

rpdillon 12y ago

Advertising dollars have to be less than what a company makes on the product advertised (at least over the long term, but probably in the short term as well). As such, it would be wholly unsustainable for advertising to be the dominant mechanism of revenue generation globally, since that would imply that companies are spending more on advertising than they could possibly receive from selling their goods and services. Maybe I'm misunderstanding...perhaps you were referring only to businesses selling access to a web service?