Record Data Sheet
Executive Summary
Apple has never published an advertising budget. Not once, not in a single annual report. What the company discloses instead is a broader line called “selling, general and administrative expenses,” which bundles marketing together with store operations, corporate staff, and everything else that isn’t research or the cost of making products. That’s the honest starting point for this question, and most coverage of “Apple’s ad spend” skips right past it.
What Apple actually discloses, and what it doesn’t
In its fiscal year 2025 (ended September 27, 2025), Apple reported total revenue of $416.161 billion and selling, general and administrative expenses of $27.601 billion, according to its Form 10-K filed with the SEC. That SG&A line covers retail store costs, corporate overhead, and marketing all together. Apple does not break out advertising as its own line item anywhere in its financial statements, and it never has.
That’s worth pausing on, because it’s the whole reason a headline number like “$3 billion a year” doesn’t hold up. Nobody outside Apple, analysts included, has an authoritative figure for what the company spends purely on advertising. Anyone who tells you they do is estimating, not reporting.
The trend that actually matters: SG&A growing slower than revenue
What Apple’s 10-K filings do let you track, year over year, is the relationship between revenue and SG&A. Between fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2025, Apple’s revenue grew from $274.515 billion to $416.161 billion, an increase of 52%. Over that same stretch, SG&A grew from $19.916 billion to $27.601 billion, an increase of 39%, according to the company’s own annual filings.
SG&A as a share of revenue moved from 7.3% in 2020 to 6.6% in 2025, with some year to year noise in between. That’s a real, measurable form of operating leverage: Apple has been able to grow its business without growing its overhead at the same pace, largely on the strength of brand loyalty and an ecosystem that doesn’t require winning back the same customer every year.
How that compares to companies that do disclose advertising
This is where a fair comparison gets tricky, and it’s worth being upfront about why. Apple’s 6.6% figure is total SG&A (marketing plus retail plus corporate overhead). It is not a pure marketing number, because Apple doesn’t publish one.
Coca-Cola is a useful contrast because it’s one of the few large companies that does disclose advertising as its own line. Coca-Cola spent $5.4 billion on advertising in 2025, according to its own 10-K, up from $5.1 billion in 2024, on total revenue of $47.941 billion. That works out to 11.3% of revenue on advertising alone, a genuinely comparable, apples to apples (no pun intended) marketing figure, not a broader overhead bucket.
Nike also breaks out a “demand creation” expense, its term for brand marketing and sports sponsorships, separately from general overhead. In its fiscal 2025, Nike spent $4.7 billion on demand creation on revenue of $46.3 billion, according to its own Form 10-K, working out to about 10.2% of revenue.
Microsoft and Amazon, like Apple, don’t disclose a standalone advertising or marketing figure in their financial statements either. That’s not a gap in this research, it’s a real difference in how these companies choose to report. So the fairest statement possible is this: Apple’s entire SG&A bucket, covering far more than just marketing, is still a smaller share of revenue than Coca-Cola’s or Nike’s marketing spend alone.
Where marketing sits in Apple’s much bigger spending picture
Marketing, whatever Apple actually spends on it, is a small piece of a much larger capital allocation story. In fiscal 2025, Apple’s 10-K shows three uses of capital that dwarf anythingrelated to advertising:
Apple repurchased $89.3 billion of its own stock during fiscal 2025, under a share buyback program the board expanded by another $100 billion in May 2025. It paid $15.4 billion in dividends and dividend equivalents, after raising its quarterly dividend from $0.25 to $0.26 per share. And it spent roughly $34.55 billion on research and development, calculated from the gap between Apple’s gross margin and operating income in its 10-K, its largest single operating expense category by far, well ahead of SG&A.
Put simply: whatever Apple spends on marketing is a rounding error next to what it spends buying back its own stock.
Frequently asked questions
- How much does Apple spend on advertising? Apple has never disclosed a specific advertising figure in any financial filing. Its 10-K reports total selling, general and administrative expenses of $27.601 billion for fiscal 2025, which includes marketing along with retail operations and corporate overhead, not a standalone ad budget.
- Why doesn’t Apple report its marketing budget separately? Because SEC disclosur rules don’t require it. Companies choose how granular to make their expense categories. Apple bundles marketing into SG&A; Coca-Cola and Nike choose to break out advertising and brand marketing as their own line items instead.
- How much did Apple make in fiscal 2025? $416.161 billion in total revenue, up 6% from the year before, according to its Form 10-K filed with the SEC.
- How does Apple’s spending compare to Coca-Cola’s? Apple’s total SG&A (marketing plus overhead) was 6.6% of revenue in fiscal 2025. Coca-Cola’s advertising expense alone, a narrower and more comparable marketing figure, was 11.3% of revenue in the same year, according to both companies’ own 10-K filings.
- How many people does Apple employ? Approximately 166,000 full-time equivalent employees as of September 27, 2025, according to its Form 10-K.
- What did Apple spend the most money on in fiscal 2025? Stock buybacks, by a wide margin. Apple repurchased $89.3 billion of its own shares in fiscal 2025, more than three times what it spent on dividends ($15.4 billion) and more than double its estimated R&D spending.
- Does Nike or Coca-Cola spend more on marketing than Apple? As a share of revenue, yes, both do, at least based on the categories each company actually discloses. Nike’s demand creation expense was about 10.2% of revenue and Coca-Cola’s advertising expense was about 11.3%, compared with Apple’s 6.6% total SG&A, which itself is abroader, less directly comparable category.