1.) Yes, these games really do make that kind of obscene money, particularly when you consider the games themselves cost very little money to produce (most are in fact just cut and paste), and are a nightmare of addictive programming tricks to get the money rolling in. If you think its bad here in the States, consider places like China where a smartphone game is the closest thing most people have to uncensored entertainment.
Here's an article to keep you up at night regarding that.
2.) Yes, advertising costs aggregate on TV are dropping. Firstly, there's a huge amount of competition on TV itself... remember the song about 57 channels and nothing's on? Now its more like 357 channels. So per-consumer view is down. Secondly there is the rapid decline in the last decade of the quality of programming. For every Big Bang Theory, Scandal, Game of Thrones, or Sunday Night Football, there's now seven or more cheaply produced reality or contest shows that frankly very few people want to watch; meaning that individual channels can no longer command the same sort of advertising dollar that they could in the era of
Must See TV and
TGIF programing blocks that could maintain viewership across an entire evening.
While you still have outliers like Scandal, or the Superbowl which can still command a premium ad placement rate; for the most part, between competition and viewer atrophy, prices have indeed gone down... or more accurately, they have remained flat while inflation has continued.
