i am pretty sure i seen advertising not long ago. may have been a banner on YouTube....anyway, you can advertise all you want, but if the game is boring, and lopsided, new players will not stay.
in my opinion the answer is pretty simple: MISSIONS. when squads were doing missions, they were attracting and keeping new players. because missions are fun and anyone can do them and feel like they're getting somewhere. whereas the last 2 years i played and probably still now, the play was stagnant with fph's hanging at the end of the runway, gun sitters waiting hours for them to get close enough. 20 people doing m3 resups on a town because that team has so many players that they can afford to have that many in m3s. since the other team only has 15 to 20 people total to fight the other 2 countries, who each have double the players and are both slaughtering your team together. why would new or old players for that matter, stick around for that? imo, its the same crowd as when i started who completely blew this game out of the water eventually. HT catered to their forum whining and eventually whittled the game down to where its only good for the forum big mouths. didnt work out too well did it?