Google celebrates 10 Years of Google Adsense with a Video

Google Adsense, Google's ad network, turned 10 years old this month.  It's hard to believe Google Adsense was launched 10 years ago as this helped Google's popular search engine turn a profit.  Well this didn't just make Google profitable but one of the most successful companies in the history of the world.

To celebrate this important milestone for Google and the Google Adsense program, what did Google decided to do?  Release a short video detailing the history of the Adsense on Youtube obviously.  Check it out.

http://youtu.be/8K8YlA7–dk

Here is the timeline of the Adsense program from the video.  I've changed some of the milestones wording in the video slightly.

  • June 2004 – Introduces display ads (with pictures)
  • June 2005 – Placement targeting helps publishers and websites owners earn from ads that reach a specific audience
  • September 2005 – Adsense teams up with Blogger to help bloggers earn from their content.
  • November 2008 – Adsense welcomes its 1 millionth publisher
  • May 2007 – Site's videos, on YouTube, can incorporate Adsense for additional revenue.
  • September 2007 – A new revenue stream for publishers, ads on mobile content.
  • October 2008 – Adsense can now help you earn from games.  (I didn't even know that.)
  • March 2009 – Connect with more advertisers through expandable formats and internet based ads.  (Don't know what that means.)
  • November 2009 – Adsense gets a major makeover, offering new features to help publishers do more with their ads.
  • October 2010 – More display ads are now shown on AdSense than text ads.
  • January 2011 – Over 1 billion daily transactions between AdSense publishers and advertisers occur on mobile phones.
  • October 2011 – More transactions are made through AdSense, than all of the world's major stock exchanges.
  • January 2012 – Publisher toolbar offers greater efficiency and new controls.
  • May 2013 – 65% of the Top 200 ad supported sites in comScore use AdSense.

Advertising and specifically the Adsense program still accounts for about 90%+ of Google's income.  Well technically all that revenue comes from Google AdWords, the counterpart for advertiser's to AdSense.  (If you are a business looking to advertise across the AdSense network you would use AdWords to bid on keywords or display your graphic advertisements.)

Even though Google Adsense often unfairly shutdowns people's Adsense accounts wihtout explanation, like mine, there has been no Advertiser network that is so popular and has generated so much money in the last 10 years.   If you want contextual based advertising nobody else is going to beat AdSense.  (Contextual advertising means that you will only see ads that is relevant to your site visitors.)

Google Adsense now includes over 2 million publishers and sends out over 100,000 checks to people every month.  That's a lot of checks and a whole lot of money.

Interestingly WordPress celebrated it's 10th Anniversary recently as well.  Many people couldn't monetize their WordPress blogs without Adsense. For most web entities 10 years is like forever by the way.

What is in store for Google Adsense in the future?  I assume they will be focusing on more mobile, video, and even app advertising.   Whatever Google will do I am fairly sure Adsense will be around for another 10 years though.

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