Advertising, intangible assets, and unpriced entertainment

Abstract

This paper addresses two aspects of advertising: its role in supporting entertainment and news, and its role as an investment. I argue that in both roles advertising’s contribution to output is being undermeasured in the national income accounts. In some cases one unit of nominal advertising input should be counted as two units of real output. In rough orders of magnitude, I argue that it is plausible that two-thirds of advertising expenditure represents unmeasured contributions to output, and the level of real GDP should be increased accordingly.