Before you started PPC at least know about its history.
PPC is the shortened form of Pay Per Click which is also called as cost per click. This is one of the vital models that online promoters use to direct people to the sites. Here the advertiser will pay only when a user clicks on the ad.
Let’s go deeper and find out when the PPC started and how it originated.
Let’s go to July 1996
This is the year the term PPC has come in to play. The first documented PPC advertising spaces were launched on a web directory called Planet Oasis on a desktop application.
Later OTI (Open text index,), in search results started selling paid ads which they define it as preferred listings.
Around the same time, Google which is now called as a giant search engine and which occupies more than 80% of search engine market share started as a research project at Stanford University.
Moving to 1997
In this year, more than 400 worldwide and local brands actively participated in PPC advertising and used it more effectively in search results and directories with fixed prices for every advertiser ranging from $0.005 – $0.25
Around the same time, Yahoo got a chance to purchase Google for $1 million which is currently esteemed at $109.5 billion.
In 1998 & 1999 (Flying High)
In these years GoTo.com came into play with a simplified model of advertising with an eye-catching tagline ‘search made simple’. In February 1998 GoTo.com introduces the bid system. Here advertiser can bid for ad position on keywords. Depending upon the bid value the ads are going to show in the search results. In this model, promoters were paying up to a dollar per click by mid-1998.
Later in 1999, GoTo.com introduces a new tool for bidding. It allows advertisers to set real time bid amount on individual keywords.
Around the same time, Google also started search engine advertising.
What happened in the 20th Century
Here in this year, Google presents Google AdWords tool, a self-helping platform for sponsors. Here Google AdWords allows the advertisers to place ads for selected keywords and will pay money only when the ad is shown. At that time, Google uses CPM bidding model i.e. they charge for 1000 impressions.
Moving to 2001
In this year GoTo.com was renamed as Overture and had a partnership with Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines and publishing the ads throughout the websites.
Here in this year, GoTo.com (later Overture) earned $288 million in pay per click ad revenue.
Moving ahead (2002)
In this year, Google introduces a new payment option for advertisers for advertising on search results. The new system uses various factors like ad relevance, click through rate and landing page experience to rank the ad on google search results.
In the year (2003)
Yahoo buys Overture for $1.63 Billion when its contract for ad publication come up for renewal.
In the same year, Google buys Applied Semantics and also launches AdSense where publishers can place ads on external websites and the publishers will get a share of each click generated.
In the year (2004)
Google’s search market share hits 84.7% of all the searches on the internet and annual revenues of $2.7 billion predominantly from PPC advertising and initial public offerings with a market value of $23.1 billion.
The article is not yet ended here you can find remaining information about History of Pay Per Click in my next article!