Anyone with a brain will look at the marketing expense numbers and make a bet as to their relevance and size going forward.
Dropping them completely and saying "look - we're profitable if you assume our customer acquisition cost is zero" seems pretty dumb. How, exactly, are we to assume their marketing numbers will drop at all? It is a sales-driven organization, no?
I'm not sure I'd call it slimy, as the article implies. But I would call it irrelevant. It's not like they're extracting some subtlety from the numbers that is not already well described by GAAP.
Dropping them completely and saying "look - we're profitable if you assume our customer acquisition cost is zero" seems pretty dumb. How, exactly, are we to assume their marketing numbers will drop at all? It is a sales-driven organization, no?
I'm not sure I'd call it slimy, as the article implies. But I would call it irrelevant. It's not like they're extracting some subtlety from the numbers that is not already well described by GAAP.