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Bang for the buck: Apple spent less than half of what Microsoft spent for ads in 2009

Saturday, May 8, 2010 · 11:44 am · 22 Comments

“Apple, which has a reputation in tech circles of selling more sizzle than steak, actually spends relatively little on advertising for a company its size,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.

“The $249 million it shelled out last year is less than half of what Microsoft spent for ads I find nowhere near as effective,” Elmer-DeWitt reports.

Elmer-DeWitt reports, “And as a percentage of revenue, it’s less than half of the expenditures of eBay, whose ads I don’t remember ever seeing.”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Dale S." for the heads up.]

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22 Comments

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rimshot

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 11:57 am · Reply

…..”The $249 million it shelled out last year is less than half of what Microsoft spent for ads I find nowhere near as effective,” Elmer-DeWitt reports….”

Maybe its time for the Evil Empire to dig up a “Mr Whipple” !
TowerTone

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 11:59 am · Reply

A turd is a turd, no matter how Microsoft tries to sell it.

-sent from my iPhone ‘sizzle’
Dan Uff

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 12:04 pm · Reply

When one makes good products (like Apple does) one does not have to spend that much trying to talk customers into buying your products.
Ampar

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 12:08 pm · Reply

But the Microsoft turd has Ballmer brand peanuts.
Chris

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 12:09 pm · Reply

“which has a reputation in tech circles of selling more sizzle than steak”?

DId that numbskull actually say that? In my town, them’s fightin’ words!
Ampar

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 12:31 pm · Reply

Windows Fucked Up was my idea.
ChrissyOne

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 12:44 pm · Reply

The ‘real people’ (or ‘F-list actors’) that MS hires for those My Idea commercials are just horrendous. They don’t come off as real people OR actors. They just betray MS’s usual lack off attention to emotional connection in their marketing.
ron

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 12:51 pm · Reply

MS was spending millions on squirting and going the party.
Sir Gill Bates

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 12:51 pm · Reply

… more sizzle than steak …

The only stake Apple needs is the one it’s driving through the cold, black heart of Microsoft.
ron

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 12:52 pm · Reply

Or was it, going to the party and then squirting?
Meyeroff Computer Consultants

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 1:24 pm · Reply

We forget that alot of apple marketing $ are spent in their stores.

They are Apples primary marketing tool.
dsect

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 1:47 pm · Reply

Tech circle steak = Registry repair
His Shadow

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 1:57 pm · Reply

Not enough articles can be written to drive a stake into the heart of the idiots position that Apple has some kind of marketing voodoo that forces people to buy products they don’t need. People holding that position simply refuse to accept the fact that Apple makes a higher quality product and gets the market clout they deserve because of the quality of those products.
His Shadow

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 2:05 pm · Reply

@Chris

Elmer-Dewitt was expressing the sentiment so he could knock it down. Tech forums are full of that loser crap, where tasteless nerds invent the myth of Apple’s voodoo marketing so that said nerds don’t have to face the superiority of Apple’s product line.
Big Al

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 2:26 pm · Reply

“which has a reputation in tech circles of selling more sizzle than steak”

Let me correct that for you.

“which has a reputation in PC IT tech circles of selling more sizzle than steak”
Apple Kool-aid drinker for 20 years

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 2:51 pm · Reply

i will believe the tech nerds when they can construct a windows/hardware configuration that i can still use 3 years later like ALL my apple products..my G4, my dual G5, my ibook G4, my airport express and extreme..all them still in use all of them over 5 years old, my G4 is 10 years old and runs leopard. Could you imagine trying to get even windows xp to run on a 10 y/o pc.

in full disclosure, i did upgrade my g4 processor from a 450mhz to 1.2ghz.

Apple doesnt need marketing when their products never have to see the inside of some slummy PC specs pusher’s shop, they run for years without a hiccup. That’s the best marketing in the world.

IT people don’t get that, or openly refuse that reality, because the reality is their job would be essentially non-existent if everyone adopted the Apple model.
LordRobin

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 6:15 pm · Reply

Apple products sell themselves. I knew their current level of success was inevitable when I switched almost eight years ago. I watched as one single Mac user, a friend of mine, switched me, then all the other friends in our circle one by one, then most of the relatives on my side of the family. People who get to see and touch Apple products, and watch others they know use them, soon want those products themselves. Others then see the new users using the products and the cycle continues. When a products sells in that manner, sales go up at an accelerated pace, and that’s exactly what’s happened.

——RM
mackle

Saturday, May 8, 2010 - 6:29 pm · Reply

along the lines of meyeroff’s comment:

ad expenditures are not necessarily just mass media. for example most of ebay’s ads are google revenue. based on that a simple comparative bang for the buck is more complex than first imagined. being lowest bang for the buck on this list might be the best position for ebay, if the next effective options (than google) caused their transaction level to drop under water.
The Other Steve

Sunday, May 9, 2010 - 1:04 am · Reply

The percentage of AOL promotional spending is way down now that Sony is discontinuing the floppy disk.
Macrelated

Sunday, May 9, 2010 - 1:28 am · Reply

I don’t know how Apple does it. I mean, it’s not as if TV, radio,
newspapers, magazines or blogs ever write about or report on Apple.