At the minimum: to find more effective ways at getting people to purchase those products being advertised. There's been a lot of interesting research done on r

At the minimum: to find more effective ways at getting people to purchase those products being advertised. There's been a lot of interesting research done on recommender systems and data mining that have been fueled by the growth of the ad-funded Web. Eventually, though, once a company gets large enough, it needs to diversify in order for it to not be totally dependent on one revenue stream, lest it find that stream disrupted in the future. Apple used to be strictly a personal computer company; now it sells not only computers, but it sells smartphones, tablets, headphones, smartwatches, and other consumer electronics, as well as provides services for a fee. Google has a lot of activities, and Facebook has been branching out into VR through its Oculus acquisition. Having a research lab could be helpful with exploring other areas that the company could branch out into.