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Over 14% of firms without reported advertising expenditures spend at least 5% of pre-tax income on it. We investigate whether managers keep these advertising expenditures confidential to protect shareholders from competitors and whether soft disclosure methods (conference calls) are used to minimize this information gap. We find that firms with the most unproven CEOs are the likeliest to keep advertising expenditures confidential. Confidential-expenditure firms exhibit lower price-to-book equity ratios and Tobin’s Q than other firms. Financial analysts have higher forecast dispersions for confidential-expenditure firms than transparent firms. Inconsistent with immateriality arguments, financial analysts ask managers of confidential-expenditure firms more advertising-related questions during conference calls than reporting firms. Yet, executives of confidential-expenditure firms provide sparser answers about these expenditures than their reporting peers.