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Nearly all of Alphabet and Meta’s profits are not from customers paying them to use their product, but advertisers who are trying to convince FB/GOOG customers to use their products.

If those companies start disappearing, or cutting back on ad budgets, FB/GOOG don’t have a business model anymore.

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Unless the recession is large enough to end the concept of commerce, advertising is not going anywhere.

People will continue to buy things, it’s just that what those things are may shift.

People will only continue to buy things, if they have a job and some spendable income.

People have been arguing that the ad tech industry is overdue for a reckoning due to its opacity and overblown promises. The book Subprime Attention Crisis is one treatment of the topic. Tightening brand budgets might force that reckoning.

Most of these advertisers are not VC-backed unprofitable companies who are selling dollars for 99 cents, but the boring, ordinary companies who manufacture stuff, ship it from China and make boring, ordinary profit margins. They are not going to be hit harder than the rest of the economy; probably, less.

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