NASCAR autos contain some of the world's most expensive real estate. Try $200,000 for a 3-by-5-inch decal. That's the absolute minimum it costs to have a sticker the size of an index card on a NASCAR Nextel Cup Series stock car for a season: $13,333 per square inch. (Costs are somewhat lower for NASCAR’s Busch and Craftsman Truck series.)

Bartelli estimates that major associate positions retail for $1 million to $3 million, while another source widens the range from $500,000 to $5 million.

And what if you want to buy a whole car to use as your personal high-speed billboard, reserving the right to sell any associate sponsorships yourself? That's one of those if-you-have-to-ask-you-can't-afford-it questions.

"I'll approximate it at, for a full-time Winston Cup team, $10 million to in excess of $20 million," says Bartelli, "and that is all the sponsorship on the car." Pfizer clearly thought it was worth buying all the space on Mark Martin's No. 6 Ford to keep Viagra front and center.

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