It's a clever way to disguise their unit economics to look better.
Their marketing budget is mostly going to pay drivers.
Put another way - you could be saying - why not pay drivers EVEN less? Well, they're paying them the least they can already. You can be sure of that.
If they did actually paid the drivers more and not disguise it as marketing - then their unit economics wouldn't look good - and when the business as a whole doesn't look good either - that's not a good look.
They can’t, that “S&M” is heavily focused on getting low information drivers into the service by smoke and mirrors about how wonderful it is to drive for them. They have to keep the rate of influx of new drivers at least above the rate of people realizing what a bad deal it is for them, aka churn.
If I remember correctly they spend a lot of money on marketing campaigns against any law that could hurt their business model. So slashing marketing might actually hurt them even more.
They only need some occasional reminders that might be targeted at the few people that haven't used or heard of friends or family using an Uber before.
Coke is somewhat of an impulse purchase. At least it needs to be in your mind to buy it at the grocery store.
Conversely, I'm not going to take an Uber ride tomorrow because they showed me an ad today. When I need to get somewhere I'll look at my options and choose the best. So long as Uber meets the minimum level of me being aware of it then theyre good.
Coke (and Pepsi) marketing is mainly concerned with affirming that drinking soda makes you sexy and keeping restaurants et al from changing their supplier.
Marketing is as much about keeping your customers from going to rival providers as it is about finding new customers. If you don't want people to leave you need to remind them why you're better than the exciting new company that's spending VC money to take your market share.
It's a clever way to disguise their unit economics to look better.
Their marketing budget is mostly going to pay drivers.
Put another way - you could be saying - why not pay drivers EVEN less? Well, they're paying them the least they can already. You can be sure of that.
If they did actually paid the drivers more and not disguise it as marketing - then their unit economics wouldn't look good - and when the business as a whole doesn't look good either - that's not a good look.