A future that's spammed by ads wherever we go

Follow the money and it's easy to see where the future leads: mobile advertising. Though it's rarely appreciated, if it wasn't for advertising, publishers would not be rushing online and the Web would likely resemble what it was originally conceived to be: A tool primarily for academics and militaries.

Whether we're talking apps or traditional publishing ventures, like news portals, blogs or websites, ads are what primarily make them profitable. And I would add that mobile advertising is in an analogous position to Internet advertising a decade ago, when everyone knew where the future lay but all the talk was about how hard it was to make money from the business. Then, Google started making billions.

It wasn't from the "sexy" business of search, per se, rather it was from following the basics of advertising and acknowledging the almost divine power of algorithms and "Big Data". Google came up with AdSense for publishers and AdWords for advertisers, creating an industry standard.