Fun question, even if it wasn't a serious one. Since I happen to work at a company whose business is related to ad placement prediction, I can try to answer. I

Fun question, even if it wasn't a serious one. Since I happen to work at a company whose business is related to ad placement prediction, I can try to answer. In our case, we have 1000-2000 instances (the number is elastic, because AWS) handling real-time ad auctions and related data processing. Since we are just one of the many players in the industry, and far smaller than the largest ones (GOOG, FB), I am pretty sure in aggregate more computing cycles are used to optimize ads than oil or weather. Crazy.