Now imagine all that is spent on marketing and advertising and imagine google reducing the waste by even a little bit. That's worth a lot.

But I too am amazed that old ladies in middle America on fixed income are pretty much 99% of the ad market.

That's not really true of adwords. The whole 'lower-middle wage housewife interested in sweepstakes' persona were the ones that clicked on banner ads, 10 years ago. Anyway, the way ppc adversising is structured these days, 'most clicks' & 'most advertising spending' are not the same thing.

There's an old saying that half of advertising is wasted, but you never know which half.

That's the point of adwords. You know which half. Roughly anyway.