Launched in 2010, Pulse is one of a growing number of publishers and platforms experimenting with so-called native advertising, in which ads replicate the form of content.
While it's always hard to pin down the exact origins of an idea -- especially one like pulse-code modulation, where a number of parties were involved -- sifting out the large and significant contributions from the gold pan of history tends to bring up the same names time and again.
The silver lining to the housing bubble was the easy money, where anyone with a pulse and a credit score hovering just above a negative number could get a no documentation mortgage.