No money in it. My unsubstantiated guess is that being part of the search team became uncool a while back because it wasn't new and shiny.
I also like to see who’s advertising because it shows which industries/companies compete on marketing, instead of their own merits.
It really shows which products have high marginal profits.
Quite frankly this is wrong. You can have all the merits in the world, but if people don't know about it then you're out of business.
> It really shows which products have high marginal profits.
AdWords can be life or death enough that it's worth eating the cost because the alternative is not having a business.
With the rise of social media, this is about 20 years out of date. If you have a great product and 100 users, 1000 people are going to see glowing testimonials at zero cost.