Google launched AdWords in October 2000, letting advertisers bid on keywords and pay only when someone clicked. The model wasn't new: Bill Gross had already built it two years earlier at GoTo.com, auctioning search placement to the highest bidder. GoTo.com later renamed itself Overture and was acquired by Yahoo for $1.63 billion — but the pay-per-click auction it pioneered became the foundation Google built AdWords on.
4 Professionals
Worth Knowing This Year
- 01
Bill Gross
Visit →Founder, GoTo.com (later Overture)
Built the pay-per-click, keyword-auction model at GoTo.com in 1998 — the model Google's AdWords borrowed two years later.
- 02
Kevin Lee
Visit →Co-founder, Didit
Co-founded Didit in 1996, one of the first agencies built specifically around search engine marketing, years before Google existed.
- 03
Fredrick Marckini
Founder, iProspect
Founded iProspect in 1996 as the first SEM-only firm in the US and wrote some of the earliest books on search engine positioning.
- 04
Danny Sullivan
Visit →Founder, Search Engine Watch
Had been running Search Engine Watch since 1996, tracking the search industry before "search marketing" was a recognized job title.
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