From a SvN comment by Jason:

"We’ve advertised here and there, but all things considered the number would round down to zero. We’re currently advertising Highrise on The Deck, for example.

I don’t have anything against advertising, but we’ve found better ways to get our message out than spending money on advertisements.

I like what Amazon.com does: Instead of advertising they give their ad budget back to their customers in the form of free shipping."

Where facts are concerned (as opposed to speculation, which I'm not interested in), I'm still not seeing how any of that is an inordinate expense of time or money. Attending a conference is now a sign that your company is built on PR? Wha?

Good point. If they do all this by themselves, it would be much cheaper to pay a PR firm.