Incidentally, half of those companies you've mentioned are in the top 50 spenders for marketing [1]. I'd hazard to say that they are all in the top 100 in global spend.
[1] https://howmuch.net/articles/worlds-top-50-biggest-advertisi...
[1] https://howmuch.net/articles/worlds-top-50-biggest-advertisi...
However, I think H8crila meant that they did not spend that much on advertisement around the time they ipoed.
If you're consumer focused, you spend on marketing, if you're business focused, you spend on sales. There are few examples to the contrary (Google, Atlassia, for example).
AirBnB early on was sniping Craigslist vacation listings[1], and now they have the resources, and scale to market directly. If AirBnB isn't doing it right, what constitutes the 'right' time to spend on marketing?
I'm curious as to how some folks would respond to this, and why.
I am not saying advertising is bad, or that it doesn't work, or that you shouldn't do it. Nothing of this sort. It's just unclear to me what's the plan for eventually returning anything to the shareholder. All of the eventual value depends on this.