Like many, I set aside 15 minutes to read Aleph’s latest blog post about the AdTech industry and what engineers should devote their time and brains into these companies. I know and respect the people at Aleph and as a person believe each is entitled to have an opinion, we don’t always have to agree..

But, as a co-founder of an Israeli AdTech company, I do want to bring up 2 quick points:

I think ads do serve and change the world.

Without ads, we wouldn’t have Facebook or twitter or youtube, we wouldn’t have the power to search whatever we want or get same-day delivery to our house for free. Without ads we would have probably been stuck with 2 Television channels (NPR or channel 1) and a very poor online content variety. Because you see, ads are the currency of the free world. I agree many try to make a quick buck building a media company, but for the most of us, it’s about giving publishers, game developers, authors and producers the ability to broadcast their content to the free world and make a living out of it. The idea that we will all consume 100% paid content is naïve and there is more than just a banner.

The article’s focus is about how much money would an engineer make or what his return would be working for an AdTech company. As a founder, I hope my engineering team value challenges at least as much as the money they’re making. Don’t get me wrong, I believe engineers should be well paid, but the best ones I met were looking for the biggest problems and challenges to solve first. When it comes to big-data, scale, delivery, efficiency and optimization – the AdTech space offers all of that – and if you want to change the experience of hundreds of millions of users, this is a good place to start.

But hey, we’re not curing cancer, nor landing a rocket on the moon – but then next time you read your favorite article, throw a bird, book an hotel or making a free international call while driving – remember what is the driving force that support all of that and maybe you will find an Israeli technology making this happen.