Apple's Advertising Budget: Revealed!

(MoneyWatch)  Just how much Apple spends on advertising has been a fun guessing game among bloggers and analysts recently, particularly given Apple's successful "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" campaign. Not only have the spots starring John Hodgman as the hapless "PC" helped eviscerate the image of Microsoft's Vista operating system, they forced Microsoft to order a defensive buy -- estimated at $300 million by, of course, Apple -- aimed at rehabilitating its roundly criticized OS.

But how much has all that cost Apple? The company hasn't said publicly, to the best of my knowledge, leaving outsiders to guess. TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld had previously estimated that Apple's massive ad budget amounted to about 10 percent of the company's $3.8 billion SG&A (selling, general, and administrative) expenses.

Well, here's the answer: Apple's total advertising budget for 2008 came to $486 million. You can find the figure hidden in plain sight in Apple's Nov. 5 10-K filing on page 62. Small wonder many people overlooked it: It's buried in a footnote headlined "Significant Accounting Policies."

For what it's worth, Apple's 2007 ad budget was $467 million; ad spending in 2006 was $338 million. As it turns out, TechCrunch wasn't too far off -- advertising came to about 13 percent of Apple's $3.8 billion SG&A budget.

So whose ad spend had the most bang for the buck? It's hard to know for sure, but it's worth noting that Apple had a very good year in its longstanding war to steal market share from PC makers. According to IDC's most recent figures, Apple grabbed 8.2 percent of the U.S. desktop/laptop combined market. That puts Apple in the #3 slot behind Dell (29.4 percent) and HP (25.3 percent).

Update: The link to Apple's 10-K previously pointed to 10kWizard, which most people can't see without an account. I've changed the link to point to Edgar, where the pages seem to be numbered differently (i.e., the budget appears on page 66 in 10kWizard, but on page 62 in Edgar). Go figure.