Every large ad company has a bunch (or a lot) of PhDs that publish papers and generally try to out innovate their competitors. There's research on human behavio

Every large ad company has a bunch (or a lot) of PhDs that publish papers and generally try to out innovate their competitors. There's research on human behavior, economics (auction theory, etc.), optimization theory, machine learning, etc. For example, modern ad systems are the largest auction houses in human history by orders of magnitude.