We study the relationship between firm’s financial statement complexity and manager’s advertising efforts to mitigate adverse effects of complex financial statements on the information environment. Employing a difference-in-differences model with the implementation of FAS 133 as a quasi-exogenous experiment, we find that firms significantly increase their advertising expenses when they face an increase in financial statement complexity. In our cross-sectional tests, we find that this increase in advertising is more pronounced for firms with (1) a smaller breadth of ownership, (2) managers with negative prospects, and (3) a larger share of retail investors. Collectively, our results suggest that managers use advertising as a means to mitigate the negative effects induced by complex financial statements.