That's a fair point, but I meant advertising as one of the tools of marketing (like datastructures are one of the tools of computer science). Sorry I was not clear.

Thus in my last sentence I was generalizing to say that marketing, even formal marketing analysis with statistics and A/B models, is still a mixture of heuristics, data, and superstition. And its practitioners

Since it's a kind of social science, I say that in contrast to fields like economics and psychology which also have plenty of charlatans but whose major practitioners are well aware of, and discuss, the epistemological flaws that still remain in the foundations of the fields. By comparison most marketing "theoreticians" remind me, at best, of alchemists.

There's no question that marketing is crucial to any successful business. But we have to realize that it's typically simply just gut judgement.

I don't think gut feeling is accurate. There is a popular saying that marketing is about applying a great deal of common sense. I think that's a bit more accurate description.

In any case, there's plenty of exact science in marketing dealing with statistical modeling. Then you have pricing, which is arguably the biggest part of marketing (a lot of people don't realize how much thinking goes into a pricing strategy). Then you have communication in all of its marketing forms, and lastly you have the product creation, which in itself is part of the marketing.

I view it like operating a jet. I have access to lots of buttons, switches and dials, and I know the science that takes care of what's beneath them. But in the end, I'm only interested in what happens as a result of using them.