You need Shiny Inventions so you can divert the talent stream away from your competitors, more than to actually work on the ads. I'm sure there's some Shiny In

You need Shiny Inventions so you can divert the talent stream away from your competitors, more than to actually work on the ads. I'm sure there's some Shiny Invention Corner in the ads business -- let's call it "AI" -- and some of the top people can be motivated to work there. But isn't the ads business by its very firehose-of-money nature something that will get on fine with that average level of talent that is sufficiently motivated by cash and doesn't need Inventions? And isn't the top talent able to make the same money doing interesting things elsewhere? (I keep hearing this is happening with AI, but I hear it on Xwitter so who knows.)