[SilasX]

I got that part [1]. But from context, it sounded like the $100k was for creating the ad deliverable itself, not deciding what ad should be done, which would included all the meetings with agencies they rejected. (If the $100k budget included such meetings, it would have been mentioned in the context of saving money by cutting of search early and not having to go through more of those.)

In that case, the only unknown would be the licensing rights, but then, that's still not something to brag about: the people he's bragging to don't know how much of the $100k that ate up, so it's unknown how inefficient they were in making the bouncing QR code.

And if you're just going to explain it by generic "high costs" to "play the game" in "the business", I'm not sure what understanding your comment is actually imparting.

[1] Not the parent but made the same point here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30418317

[ghaff]

He specifically says "and of course the production budget was tiny, less then $100k)" and further down the thread "Although we didn’t work with a traditional ad agency I’d be remiss not to mention the creative firm we worked with who actually created the ad, commissioned the song, got the clearances etc etc. Honestly, felt like we were all one team so I didn’t fully realize it, thank you!" so it sounds as if they paid a creative firm <$100K to create it which isn't hard for me to believe if they couldn't do it in-house.