> How many man-hours go into various parts of the advertising distribution chain?
Not that much. AI is already heavily automating advertising and has been for a long time. And a lot of activity that was previously exposed to untargeted passive advertising - like TV - has shifted to mediums that don't have any, like Netflix (for most subscribers).
And as you note, advertising isn't useless. It's how people find out about things they didn't know they wanted.
Alphabet and Meta, two of the largest firms to ever exist by market capitalization, revenues and profits, are largely sustained by their online advertisement products.
I don't think your assessment that this is mostly automated stands in the face of the number of man-hours both of these companies purchase each year.
But their ad tech/sales departments are relatively small compared to the whole company. Most Alphabet/Meta employees are subsidized by ads, not working on them directly.
And many of them have the pleasure of working on projects that will never see the light of day and have roughly epsilon chance of positively impacting anyone! One golden goose that changed the world and legions of people spinning wheels. What a system!
Not that much. AI is already heavily automating advertising and has been for a long time. And a lot of activity that was previously exposed to untargeted passive advertising - like TV - has shifted to mediums that don't have any, like Netflix (for most subscribers).
And as you note, advertising isn't useless. It's how people find out about things they didn't know they wanted.