&gt;<i>Your message is a little disjointed. Are &quot;other parts&quot; marketing or not-marketing? Take your pick.</i><p>Oh, I see what you mean. I meant to write: &quot;are essential to the production of the item&quot; (scrap &quot;not&quot;).<p>&gt;<i>Anyway, the article doesn&#x27;t discuss where ad money goes. It would need to use figures for that.</i><p>It would only need figures to do that in detail, whereas the article wants to give an overview of where money goes, not go into numbers.<p>&gt;<i>It&#x27;s irrelevant whether a cost is &quot;essential&quot; to the production of the item. Distribution is a cost that&#x27;s not part of production.</i><p>Well, even if I got the wording wrong, I obviously consider &quot;distribution&quot; an essential cost too. It might not be part of production per se, but it&#x27;s necessary for getting the item to the buyer. Advertisement, much less so.<p>There are tons of products that are sold without any advertising, but very few sold without distribution (e.g. some products you get directly from their makers&#x27; facilities), and it&#x27;s totally inconvenient for larger items or items manufactured abroad.<p>&gt;<i>You seem to suffer from the very common bias of &quot;build it and they will come.&quot;</i><p>Well, if we&#x27;re to discuss my preferences on the matter, that (non advertising) is how most commerce worked for milenia, and how it&#x27;s working even now for millions of non-advertised products.<p>Sure, for people to know and buy specifically an X brand, it takes advertisement.<p>But that&#x27;s neither essential to society&#x27;s functioning, nor beneficial (e.g. allows crappy products to advertise more than good ones, and be preferred over them, and also makes people over-buy with ads as constant reminders for consumption).<p>As a consumer why should I care whether brand X sells -- except if I&#x27;m its owner?<p>People can still buy whatever they want and need, without advertising. And in that world the best products can get word of mouth and organic growth unobscured by paid advertisement. As for further &quot;discovery&quot; there are always articles and posts about upcoming products, reviews, etc.