The History Of PPC Advertising1996 - 2014

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1996● The first documented and known PPC

advertising spaces launched by Planet Oasis on a Desktop application.

● Open Text Index begins selling PPC ads in their search results as 'Preferred Listings'. Outcry and bad publicity ensues.

● Google is started as a research project at Stanford University whilst Yahoo! launches its IPO valuing it at $334 million.

1997● More than 400 major brands actively using

PPC advertising in search results and directories with prices fixed for every advertiser and ranging from $0.005 - $0.25 per click.

● Yahoo! turns down an offer to buy Google for $1 million.

1998● In February 1998 Goto.com establishes the

PPC auction system with advertisers bidding for ad position on keywords and ads ranked by bid value. By mid 1998 advertisers were paying up to a dollar per click.

1999● GoTo.com launches a tool set that allows

advertisers access to set real time pay per click bid amounts on individual keywords.

2000● The online advertising market crashes with

the dot com bubble bursting causing many businesses to go bankrupt, scaring away advertisers.

● Google launches Google Adwords, a self-service advertising platform that allows advertisers to place ads on selected keywords. Adwords is launched with a flat CPM bidding model where advertisers pay each time their ad is shown.

2001● GoTo.com renames itself Overture

Services and partners with Yahoo!, MSN and other search engines syndicating advertisers throughout the sites.

● Overture earns $288 million in pay per click ad revenue with Google's ad revenue from pay per impression ads hitting $85 million.

2002● Google Adwords introduces a new pay per

click payment option for advertising on its search results. The new system also uses ad relevance (measured by click through rate) for ranking - maximising revenue and the search experience.

● Shopping.com allows ecommerce sites to bid per click to have their products appear higher in the price comparison. Other shopping comparison networks follow suit.

2003● Yahoo! acquires Overture for $1.63 billion

when its contract for ad syndication comes up for renewal.

● Google launches Adsense (and acquires Applied Semantics) which allows online content publishers to serve pay per click advertising targeted to the site content and audience with publishers receiving a share of each click generated.

2004● Google's search market share hits a peak

of 84.7% of all searches on the internet and IPOs with a market value of $23.1 billion and annualised revenues of $2.7 billion (predominantly from PPC advertising.)

2005● Google acknowledges issues with click

fraud in its pay per click network and implements measures to detect and stop the fraud occurring.

● Google releases Google Analytics, allowing advertisers to better track the performance of their advertising campaigns.

● Adsense generates $799 million in revenue in the 4th quarter, 42% of Google's revenue.

2006● Microsoft drops Overture as its search ad

provider and establishes its own self service pay per click advertising platform - adCenter.

● Facebook launched advertising on its website partnering with Microsoft adCenter to syndicate banners and sponsored links.

● Google acquires YouTube, the worlds largest online video site for $1.65 billion.

2007● Facebook launches its own advertising

platform allowing advertisers to target users by demographics and interests.

● Fetchback and Criteo launch remarketing. This allows advertisers to specifically target people who have been to their website in the past through a range of networks.

● Bid management software solutions such as Marin are launched to automate PPC bidding.

2008● Google improves the relevance score it

gives adverts (known as Quality Score) to improve the search experience and maximise the revenue it makes per search.

● LinkedIn launches DirectAds allowing advertisers to target users of their website by demographics, industry or job title.

● A range of new PPC networks start up including new options such as Shopping Comparison networks.

2009● With internet usage on

mobile devices increasing, the major PPC networks start to focus their efforts on mobile advertising solutions with Google acquiring AdMob, a mobile advertising startup, for $750 million.

2010● Microsoft search relaunches as Bing and

teams up with Yahoo! to syndicate their ads on the Yahoo network in a combined effort to combat Google's growing search share.

● Google Adwords unveils a host of new advertising options including Product Listing Ads and Remarketing.

● Content marketing via pay per click platforms such as Outbrain grows in popularity for news outlets and publishers.

2011● Facebook launches sponsored stories

which pulls users' images and names to promote advertisers posts to their friends. This later led to a lawsuit and removal of the advertising option.

● Cost per clicks on all networks continue to rise with 'insurance' keywords on Google Adwords averaging $54.91 per click in the United States followed by 'loans' keywords with $44.28 per click.

2012● Twitter rolls out a self-service advertising

platform for US advertisers and will add other countries in the future.

● Google surpasses $50 billion in revenue for the first time with 95% of revenue derived from advertising.

2013● Google launches Enhanced Campaigns

which limit the ability to turn off certain devices.

● Pay per click options for eCommerce websites increases with Dynamic Remarketing - the ability to remarket similar products to what the user has just viewed.

● Facebook launches its own remarketing solution that can be attached to websites or mobile apps.

2014● Google launches the ability to track phone

calls directly from ads and from websites allowing better optimisation of ads and keywords.

● With pay per click advertising costs rising, companies are increasingly turning to conversion rate optimisation and the use of landing pages to maximise performance.

● Advertising spend on PPC continues to grow with mobile spend up 98% YoY.

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