Very good question. I also do not know exactly why new projects spend so much money on advertisements. In cryprocurrency, advertisement is worth it? It there any set criteria that binds a project to collect only a certain amount of money? or one can collect as much as it can? But I think cryptocurrrency is such platform where advertisements rule and without advertisements, you can not get the attention of traders and investors. That is why I think it is a bit different from stock market. It is decentralized and it is for all people around the world.
That is because, they are thinking for a long term investment back from their project. The best way to do that is to strengthen their marketing, and even the profit is not really obtained on the ICO stage, once their project has been launched, there, the profit will going to be steady. They will need just to be successful in funding their project initially.
No matter what they think of the project future, an ICO would never spend more than 30% of the total project fund on promotion; I dont know where the op got his idea from.
If you talk about project being launched, if they have spent virtually 90% of the fund on promotion, then what will they use to develop the project they want to launch, if there is any ICO doing this, then it is clear that they dont have a product, and they are just trying to use the system as a money Ponzi scheme.
A genuine project will never waste money that much on promotion, yes to promote is quite expensive, but we are also in this industry together and we all know how things operate, so that ICO cannot just come here and give us a blatant lie.