And generally in the absence of concrete convincing and quantitative evidence to the contrary they had to conclude that the benefits of advertising might be questionable At a time when enthusiasm to account for every dollar spent was naturally high it was simply not clear enough to many client companies exactly what they were getting for the large sums of money they were spending exactly what return they were seeing on their investment Advertising  ever a business to excite the suspicions of the sceptic  was as a consequence more than ever before on trial