Comment by majormajor

> To think we’ve handsomely paid our best and brightest the last few decades in pursuit of.. advertising?

I think "efficiency" is more accurate there. Even post-Google/ad-tech-boom the overall trends that started decades earlier continued to be: (1) faster turnaround time on communications, (2) faster delivery of result artifacts, (3) faster knowledge of changes in the market and faster response.

Advertising is a particularly visible field with lots of money to throw at those things (active investment trading is another). But practically every other industry has chased those same things as well, all the way down to things like parking meters.

Personally I'm not convinced that this is such a great thing anyway - does anyone enjoy their boss messaging you at 11PM on any day they want whenever they get the fancy? - but that's the larger reason so much brainpower has been invested into it.