A lot of people in tech don't seem to realize how big the advertising business is. It was gigantic even before we came along. The behemoth has turned its attent

A lot of people in tech don't seem to realize how big the advertising business is. It was gigantic even before we came along. The behemoth has turned its attention from TV and print to online, but it's still a behemoth. The amount spent on advertising just in the US is more than Facebook's entire market cap, each year. It should hardly be a surprise that an industry that big can have a significant effect on web-based companies' profit models. BTW, the finance industry is even bigger, and has a correspondingly larger effect on how the tech industry really works. I've even seen it said that Silicon Valley is basically just a (not so) well disguised extension of Wall Street, and it's not wrong.