You deduct business expenses from your gross income, not your tax liability.
Let’s say the tax rate is 30%, spending $100,000 on a useless advertising campaign will save you $30,000 in taxes, **NOT **$100,000
Latest payout I heard about, each claimant got about $18. The lawyers got $51 million.
Not every business that can ship by rail actually does.
(1) Intermodal is much bigger now than, say, 20 years ago. Intermodal means you don’t have to have a siding at your factory or warehouse to directly load and unload as the container or trailer moves as/on a truck the first and/or last few miles. And intermodal means you can use any railroad with an intermodal yard within an acceptable drive of the source or destination, not just the adjacent or closest one.
The railroads that advertise want to remind businesses that don’t have a rail line next to them as a constant reminder 
that rail is still an option for them.
(2) Even among businesses adjacent to a rail line that move enough stuff to fill one or more whole railcars, not everyone does. To be a bit blunt, a lot of railroads’ freight service stunk in the '70s and into the '80s, and some shippers went 100% to trucks and never looked back. Though reliability and customer service have generally improved leaps and bounds since then, many shippers don’t know that, and some shippers have heard it but don’t believe it. 
Advertising won’t signficantly affect the second group but it can make a dent in the first group. 
This one is easy to explain. Viagra is a huge seller for Pfizer.. That single drug accounted for $2 billion in sales for 2010 alone. Cialis is made by Eli Lily, and is their effort to go after the same multi-billion dollar market. It sold $1.6 billion in 2009. Couple that with the fact that the patent for Viagra expires in 2012, and it is very much in both companies interest to advertise their two products heavily. They are the Coke and Pepsi of boner pills. Bayer’s Levitra would be the Snapple .
As to why these are so popular. People like sex. It’s as simple as that. Fuck, at least their commercials don’t feature “Smiling Bob”. That shit should make anybody suspicious as Hell.
This was confirmed by an actor in hollywood (can’t remember the name, sorry), in an interview he did. I don’t know if he said it as a joke, or it’s the rule… but the worse a movie is expected to do at the box office, the more up front advertising you will see and the earlier the advertising will start.
And people wonder why this country is going down the crapper.
This is disgusting.
Yes, that’s correct.
what did I say? Sorry if I implied otherwise.
Oh, I see. I said it was a legitimate business expense, and the other poster asked if it was tax deductible.
In any event, you are correct. Flo’s lipstick would be part of the advertising budget for the year and deducted from Gross income.
It’s disgusting that a couple of dozen (perhaps a hundred) lawyers got $51 million for ten years of work?
What people resolve to do and what they actually do might be two different things. My husband and I vastly prefer beef and pork over poultry, but my husband is convinced that poultry, even deep fried poultry, is healthier than beef or pork. So he resolves to eat more poultry. But if I suggest that we have chicken fried steak for dinner, instead of grilled chicken again, his good intentions go right out the window.
+1. If a movie NEEDS to be heavily promoted, it will almost certainly suck. Yeah, I need to be aware that a movie is out, and what it’s about…but I am really, really suspicious about interviews and sneak peeks that come out before the movie is released.
when a victim gets less than $20 and the lawyers get $51 million?
yeah.
The beef industry was under attack in the 1980s. Remember, fats were bad for you back then. In the late 80s we got the Pork: The Other White Meat campaign and I think beef even had a campaign before the “It’s What’s for Dinner” campaign began in the early 1990s.
As a fan of sports radio, I’ve learned that AM radio attracts the sleaziest and most suspicious of all advertisers.
In all seriousness, ads on sports radio are pretty much limited to:
- Beer
- Strip clubs & titty bars
- Military recruiting
- Gold
- Computer virus removal
- Systems for getting out of credit card debt
- Ways to turn structured settlements into cash
- Medical secrets “they” don’t want you to know about
- Lawyers who can help you sue somebody
All things considered, the beer and titty bar ads are the LEAST suspicious ones I hear!
(Get the feeling advertisers don’t have a very high opinion of us AM radio listeners?)
My gf works in advertising. I asked her why coal was being advertised so heavily, since I sure as hell do not buy it, nor to any of my friends. In this case it is being done to help them hire employees to work underground. They do public relations type commercials and then have less difficulty hiring.
Did you know you have THREE credit scores? And that (apparently) only males have one credit score that’s short and wears a hockey mask with his leotard? All-male ads make me suspicious.
I don’t normally take notice, but there are two that grab my focus for all the wrong reasons:
The GE one playing endlessly right now, showing the guys building the jet engine in Peebles (?) Ohio would have one believe that there are no shavers or razors in the town. Hair everywhere.
My favorite non-stop ads are the ones for Angies List. The makers of those commercials employ the very worst of the worst hair stylists. IMHO.
Radio ads that get zapped: the ones that loudly repeat the 800 number three times. Like it’s written somewhere that nobody will remember your phone number unless you say it three times. That’s three times. That’s three times.
I live in a state where medical marijuana is legal. The ads for it have completely taken over the space where all those zillions of sleazy ads for actual thinly-veiled prostitutes used to be. I was suspicious of the ‘adult services’ or ‘massage’ ads, because what else besides prostitution could they possibly have been for? I’m not too suspicious of the MMJ ads though. It is just strange that there are soooooo many of them.
I always have thought Flo is kind of hot, even if Progressive itself is a little annoying. Flo should seriously consider switching to a skimpy nurse outfit and peddling MMJ.
And, +1 to movies that advertise like crazy, I hadn’t thought of that one. I never saw Planet of the Apes, even after it got decent reviews, simply because the blanket ad coverage for it screamed to me too, “This movie sucks!”
As to movies, my rule of thumb is that if you see more than three different trailers for a movie it’ll suck.
I just went to my profile page here and it had an ad about investing in gold coins.
Actually, unless the number spells out something, I AM unlikely to remember it unless it’s repeated several times. And by several, I mean more than three.
Sorry.
I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.
Gold is a focus of superstition. It does have practical applications in aerospace electronics, as in jewelry, as it doesn’t corrode.
We know how great it is, we don’t need to be told. It is a fossil fuel, and overconsumption encourages us to waste our helium reserves (in the same wells). You are right to be leery.
Let me add (US only, fortunately) the ads for various drugs of dubious medical value: anti-depressants, erectile dysfunction drugs, and so forth. A lot of this is trying to goose demand for unnecessary prescriptions, and pull some money from HHS through Medicare.