It’s easy to sign up for Google Adwords today and appreciate the system they have in place for creating and managing ad campaigns. However, for anyone who has been in the online marketing game for a while, you will remember that the system was not always as smooth and advanced as it is today.
Every day thousands of new advertisers and affiliate marketers are logging into their Google Adwords accounts for the first time, but little do they know that the creation of Adwords goes all the way back to 1999.
In the infographic below you will get to walk through the past 13 years and see for yourself how Google Adwords has progressed over the years and became what it is today.
A few highlights from the infographic are below.
- 1999 – Google begins the creation of what would become Adwords by selling ads on a CPM basis
- 2001 – Google’s ad revenue is at $85 million, while Overture is at $288 million
- 2004 – Google goes public with their stock
- 2006 – Google is loaded with lawsuits from ad campaigns and has to pay $90 million in click fraud charges
- 2007 – Google announces a 63% profit on $3.66 billion from online advertising
- 2010 – Google Adwords is the main focus at Google, now a huge contributor in the $28 billion of annual revenue
One of the important things to remember while reading through the infographic and these stats/notes is to remember that Yahoo and Overture were kings during their time and no one thought they would ever fall. So what does the future hold for Google and how long will Adwords remain as the largest self serve ad network?