I hope this finds you and your family well as the holidays approach. As a kid, I used to spend this time frantically flipping through the Sears catalog in search of last-minute ideas for my Christmas list. I may be dating myself here, as the iconic catalog was discontinued in 1993 after more than a century in print. 

This is one tradition that today’s youth won’t get to experience. But that doesn’t mean retailers can’t reach them (or their parents) through other channels. Print advertising might be in decay, but sellers have adopted other inventive ways of separating us from our money, particularly in the digital realm.

A good chunk of corporate ad budgets is spent in November and December as retailers gear up for the holiday rush. Few disclose exactly how much they spend trying to sway shoppers, but the Guardian (a British media group) estimates that U.K. companies plowed a record 5.6 billion pounds into fourth-quarter advertising last year. 

You can bet their larger U.S. counterparts spend even more. 

Of course, the effort to connect with consumers doesn’t suddenly end on December 26. There is a constant year-round effort to engage and retain customers. This is a race — and taking your foot off the advertising pedal leaves many businesses at risk of being left in the dust by rivals. 

That’s why so many spend a nickel or dime (or more) from every dollar of sales on marketing efforts. One of my favorites in the group collects steady income from big names like AT&T (NYSE: T) and Burger King, which in turn supports one of the highest dividend yields in the S&P 500 — and distributions are about to rise again.

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Advertising is timeless, which I find reassuring. Thousands of years ago, the ancient Egyptians painted sales notices on papyrus. In the middle ages, store proprietors employed town criers to help drum up business. And today’s store merchants are no different, doing whatever they can to showcase their wares and attract customers.

Why does that matter? Well, just ask anybody who invested in pocket pagers, answering machines or floppy disc drives. Technological advances can quickly render must-have products and services into obsolete relics. Even landline telephones, a revolutionary marvel in their day, are now facing slow extinction.

But there will always be demand for advertising that helps connect buyers and sellers. Some of the biggest spenders include auto makers, wireless providers, drug companies and fast food chains. They are always communicating with consumers — and spending an extraordinary amount of money doing so. 

Samsung Electronics, for example, commits $2.1 billion to advertising each year. And it barely cracks the top-10 biggest spenders. Companies like Ford (NYSE: F), Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) invest far more. According to emarketer, corporate advertisers plowed more than $200 billion into various forms of media in 2016. 

And industry observers are forecasting that total to expand by another $4 billion or so in 2017. It’s safe to stay that this industry is around to stay for the foreseeable future. 

But my latest income pick for High-Yield Investing isn’t really about advertising, per se. Yes, my featured recommendation happens to be in the ad game. But that’s not why I chose it. 

As long-time readers know, I come from the Warren Buffett school of investing that teaches the importance of economic moats. In the business world, success invites competition, which inevitably erodes profits and drives down industry returns toward the cost of capital. Only businesses encircled by defensive moats can fend off competition, generate sustainable excess returns and create real lasting value for shareholders. 

Just like the providers of timeless advertising, these companies have established themselves to the point where they will be around through almost any major shift or downturn. The wider and deeper the moat (metaphorically speaking) the better protected the company. Buffet prefers them to be nearly “unbreachable”. You’ll find economic moats surrounding all of the world’s greatest, most profitable business… Facebook, Visa, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart. 

So how do you dig a moat? Well, I touched on this topic in a 2015 article. I would encourage you to take a few minutes to revisit it. 

That particular article set the stage for Six Flags (NYSE: SIX), which at that point had raised its dividend 20-fold over the previous five years. It takes hundreds of millions of dollars and several years of work to build a large-scale amusement park. So you don’t see one on every street corner. 

These barriers to entry mean that Six Flags has attractive markets like Dallas and Atlanta all to itself. Since my recommendation, SIX has boosted its quarterly dividend two more times by a total of 23% and delivered a total return thus far of 33.7%. 

Today, I’ve identified another gem in the same vein. It’s exactly the type of entrenched, highly profitable company that I like to recommend to subscribers to my premium newsletter, High-Yield Investing. It has a completely different business model, but just like Six Flags, it’s protected by tall barriers to entry that lock out competition and keep profits at high levels. 

The government itself erected this barrier, otherwise known as the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. This piece of legislation placed strict limits on the installation of new roadside billboards, thus preserving a monopoly for existing owners in many markets. 

That moat has allowed one leader to boost operating profits by 130% over the past five years. And because the company earns far more than it needs to operate, it generously pays one of the market’s highest dividends — with another increase on the way. 

Unfortunately, I can’t reveal the name of this gem here. The name of this company, and the names of my other high-yield picks, is only available to my High-Yield Investing subscribers. If you’d like to gain exclusive access to my latest picks and analysis, simply follow this link to learn more.