It is interesting that what the author considers "foundational knowledge" in the context of running a sucessful advertising campaign to be "the HTTP protocol and Session management". I would argue that while this is not completely irrelevant, surely foundational knowledge in this sphere consists of an understanding of human psychology, sales, how to identify your target audience etc. If I were asked to choose between someone with an in depth understanding of the http protocol and someone with an in depth understanding of human behaviour to run an ad campaign I would definitely choose the latter. I would go so far as to argue that if I had to choose between training engineers to understand user psychology, sales and UI/UX, or training advertising people to better understand the technology behind their campaigns that I would get a much greater return from investing in the former.