It's no more business as usual

The advertising-driven revenue model may finally be seeing cracks due to two technological developments over the last 12 months

Given the constant upgrade to technologies, business models in the Web economy have seen remarkable stability.  Google’s search engine grabs almost all search traffic, and monetises it via advertising. Meanwhile, Facebook corners social media engagement and monetises that via advertising.

This has survived tectonic shifts in technology as Web 2.0 got going, and as internet access went mobile. Indeed, advertising has flourished in the smartphone era, adding apps that sucked more data, and exploited additional locational data, available with always-on broadband.

That advertising-driven revenue model may finally be seeing cracks due to two technological developments over the last 12 months. One is