HISTORY's Moment in Media: The Internet Ad Revolution

In truth the actual internet ad revolution came 18 years ago this month on March 4 2003 That39s when Google launched what was then called contenttargeted advertising Until then Google had been making its money by selling contextual text ads that ran alongside results from its stillnew search engine quickly growing dominant With contenttargeted advertising online publishers could gain access to that technology With a snippet of Google code installed on their sites ads aligned to their content would appear on their pages and the publishers could make money while Google handled all the workThe next month Google acquired a company called Applied Semantics which was working on its own system to place relevant text ads on a web page Their product was called AdSense and in June of that year Google39s contenttargeted advertising took on the new nameGoogle AdSense as it has been known since helped turn the search giant into an ad behemoth And it also helped countless small and mediumsize publishers monetize their websitesThe new service was the baby of Susan Wojcicki an early Googler amp8212 employee No 16 amp8212 who since 2014 has been the CEO of YouTube a Google subsidiary Fresh off her MBA in 1998 Wojcicki bought a house in Menlo Park California and to help with the mortgage rented out her garage to two students from nearby Stanford University who were working on developing their new idea The students were Larry Page and Sergey Brin and the idea was GoogleWojcicki would go on to run marketing for Google in its early days She came up with the first Google Doodles those whimsical reinterpretations of the company39s logo displayed on the search page to mark historical dates and special events She introduced her younger sister Anne to Brin and the two were married for nearly a decade and have two kids togetherBut most important she spent years overseeing Google39s ad operations quotIt was really a novel idea at the time to serve ads that were targeted dynamicallyquot she told USA Today for a profile in 2007 It changed the dynamics of web publishingNo more need for HotWired to leverage Wired39s sales connections to book the big ATampampT deal individuals started earning a living from their selfpublished sites quotThere are many many AdSense millionairesquot a blogger named Jennifer Slegg said in that USA Today profile At the time she was running a site all about AdSense called JenSenseIt also turned into a gusher of cash for Google The company gave Wojcicki a Google Founders39 Award a financial bonus used to keep Googlers from taking their great ideas and leaving the company with themBut whatever that Founders39 Award paid it must have been worth it Last year Google brought in 1825 billion in revenue For the fourth quarter that total was 569 billion and in that quarter some 462 billion of it was ad revenue The company doesn39t break things down further but that39s more than 500 millionplus per day thanks in part to AdSenseClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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HISTORY's Moment in Media: The Internet Ad Revolution

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Jim Lecinski | Clinical Marketing Professor | The Insomnia Cookies Case - The GOST Model Taught at Northwestern - By Mike Linton

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