Advertising Rivalry and Discretionary Disclosure

Advertising is a critical competitive tool that shapes interactions among firms in the product market. Using third-party tracked data on advertising outlet costs, I find nontrivial portion of public firms, even those with intense activities, do not disclose expenses their financial statements, indicating significant disclosure discretion. further use category-level to develop firm-specific measure rivalry. predict and rivalry negatively associated likelihood disclosing expenses. This negative association more pronounced when advertise less trackable media outlets or have mature products. These findings suggest consider proprietary concerns about competition discourage