The Palm Pre needs to be a runaway success for both Palm and Sprint, and to try to make sure that happens, apparently no expense is too much when it comes to advertising the Palm Pre.

Apparently, Sprint placed a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal, and according to bekme.blogspot, that spread cost a whopping $264,000.

So that’s a cool ¼ million on a single advertisement for the Palm Pre. One has to wonder just how far mobile carriers are prepared to go to ensure the success of a new handset such as the Palm Pre, in any case whatever is shelled out on advertising has to be recouped eventually and the only real way to do that is for the Palm Pre to sell and sell big.