Earned & PaidCharter
Charter spent $3.71B on advertising and marketing in fiscal 2024, up 1.7% on the year before and +22% since 2019. That's 6.7% of revenue, more than in 2019: leaning in.
Marketing spend by year
Bars: advertising and marketing expense, $B (10-K). Line: spend as a share of revenue.
What they told investors
“So our brand awareness continues to go up every year.”Christopher L. Winfrey · 2025 Q4 · transcript
“various new offer expressions in our marketing mix are designed to find audience and drive more traffic to digital and traditional sales channels, saving customers money without sacrificing our revenue or cash flow potential at the household level.”Chris Winfrey · 2025 Q3 · transcript
“Marketing and residential sales expense grew by 5.4% due to some higher marketing spend with dramatically higher impressions at lower cost and continued channel mix shift from lower-cost channels like in-house call centers to digital and affiliates.”Jessica Fischer · 2025 Q3 · transcript
What the 10-K says about marketing
- investing in brand “In addition, as we continue to grow our mobile services using virtual network operator rights from a third party, we expect continued growth-related sales and marketing and other customer acquisition costs. We also continue to consider and pursue opportunities in the mobile…” 10-K, Jan 30, 2026
Say vs do
Charter's management has talked about its marketing budget, but in ways annual filings can't check: one quarter, one brand or channel, or the mix.
What they said
“Marketing and residential sales expense grew by 5.4% due to some higher marketing spend with dramatically higher impressions at lower cost and continued channel mix shift from lower-cost channels like in-house call centers to digital and affiliates.”
Jessica Fischer on the 2025 Q3 earnings call, Oct 31, 2025 · transcript
Can't tell from annual filings It's about part of a year; filings report full years.
What they did
| Year | Marketing spend | Change | Share of revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2024 | $3.71B | +1.7% | 6.7% |
| FY2023 | $3.65B | +1.9% | 6.7% |
| FY2022 | $3.58B | +10.1% | 6.6% |
| FY2021 | $3.26B | +7.4% | 6.3% |
| FY2020 | $3.03B | -0.4% | 6.3% |
| FY2019 | $3.04B | +0.1% | 6.7% |
How we check: a statement gets a verdict only when it's clearly about the size of the whole company's marketing budget over a full fiscal year; we compare it with the advertising and marketing expense in that year's 10-K. Statements about one quarter, one brand or channel, or the mix between brand and performance can't be checked against annual filings.
What they say about media
The marketing channels it talks about using for itself on earnings calls and in its 10-Ks and 10-Qs, since 2019; counts are statements, not spending.
- Creative campaigns “Marketing and residential sales increased $68 million during the three months ended March 31, 2025 compared to the corresponding period in 2024 primarily due to our continued focus on driving growth and the launch of our new brand platform, Life Unlimited.” 10-Q · Apr 25, 2025 · source
What they see in the market
What its leaders and filings say about the ad market: its own ad business, or the channels advertisers use, since 2019; counts are statements, not spending.
- Connected TV & streaming “Advertising sales revenues increased $45 million and $63 million during the three and six months ended June 30, 2026, respectively, as compared to the corresponding periods in 2025 primarily due to an increase in political and streaming advertising revenue, partly offset by a…” 10-Q · Jul 24, 2026 · source
- Linear TV “Advertising sales revenues consist primarily of revenues from commercial advertising customers, programmers and other vendors, as well as local cable and advertising on regional sports and news channels.” 10-K · Jan 30, 2026 · source
- Programmatic & display “Spectrum Reach also offers a programmatic sales platform allowing advertising agencies and advertisers to buy inventory in a fully automated way.” 10-K · Jan 30, 2026 · source
- CRM, loyalty & first-party data “Our fully deployed Audience App, which uses our proprietary set-top box viewership data (all anonymized and aggregated), allows us to create data-driven linear TV campaigns for local advertisers.” 10-K · Jan 31, 2025 · source
- Measurement “We've also been investing in addition to more forward-thinking areas like addressability, which we're selling; split avails, which we have capabilities on; but also moving into using everything that I just described before, moving into attribution as well.” Christopher L. Winfrey on the earnings call · Jul 30, 2021 · source