Again, I don't want to get into a political slap fight here, I want to keep this on the subject of advertising.

It sounds to me like you're confusing the magnitude of advertising spending with effectiveness of advertising techniques.

Some people have found more effective ways to advertise to people, we know all this, it isn't uncharted conversation territory. We all know about micro-targetting based on personalized data, dominating certain niche mediums like AM radio to target people when they're driving and coordinated pushes with people in industry.

The point is that advertising works. It works disconcertingly well.

This is why people buy stupidly impractical automobiles that they don't need.