The digital marketing experts featured for 2000 are Bill Gross, Kevin Lee, Fredrick Marckini and Danny Sullivan.
What changed in digital marketing in 2000
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, and that pay-per-click auction is quickly becoming the model the rest of the search industry builds on.
4 Professionals
Worth Knowing This Year
- 01
Bill Gross
Founder, GoTo.com (later Overture)
Built the pay-per-click, keyword-auction model at GoTo.com in 1998, the same model Google's just-launched AdWords is now borrowing.
GoTo.com's auction format is already becoming the commercial backbone of search advertising, well before "PPC" was a term marketers used casually.
- 02
Kevin Lee
Co-founder, Didit
Co-founded Didit in 1996, one of the first agencies built specifically around search engine marketing, years before Google existed.
Didit's early focus on search-only client work is setting a template for what a business built entirely around search marketing can look like, now that pay-per-click auctions are giving the discipline a real business model to sell.
- 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.
His early writing helped turn search engine positioning from a technical curiosity into a service businesses were willing to pay an agency for.
- 04
Danny Sullivan
Founder, Search Engine Watch
Had been running Search Engine Watch since 1996, tracking the search industry before "search marketing" was a recognized job title.
His coverage gave the fledgling industry a shared vocabulary and a place to follow how engines like AltaVista, Yahoo and the newly prominent Google ranked pages.
Also featured in 2003, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2018, 2020 and 2026
This page is an independent editorial mention published by Digital Business Marketing. The numbering above is a browsing order, not a formal award, contest, vote, or ranking, and inclusion does not imply any named person endorses Digital Business Marketing.
