Promotion still is expensive unless you get free press, etc. Personally I consider the whole thing (instead of just advertising) as part of marketing, such as having Will Ferrell appear on Saturday Night Live or the Tonight Show. Publicists got paid for them, and it came from the marketing budget.
Marketing, publicity and promotions do cross over a lot. Marketing guys will tell you it's all under the marketing branch, and publicity guys will tell you it's all under publicity. But in the film industry they have different departments for those three things, so that's how I refer to it.
And it's actually very easy to get free press and free promotions, which is where the OP's question comes in -- the smaller films have an easier time doing promotions as opposed to marketing. It might seem like they're not doing as much because you don't necessarily see the results like you do with a TV commercial or print ad (and sometimes even those print ads are free --- promotions, not marketing or advertising), but the film is not on its own. It's not becoming successful by itself.
Publicists got paid for them, and it came from the marketing budget.
Actually, that's not something the publicists would get paid for, unless it's freelance. But the studios have their own people to pitch things like late night, and that's regular salary for them. Will Ferrell's personal publicist, however, gets paid because Ferrell pays her. Usually when someone like Ferrell signs on to do the film, they agree to do the publicity for it. But not always -- and in that case, the studio will usually just pick someone else who agrees. Bale didn't do Terminator press, as I recall, but Worthington and McG did.
