The History of PPC

Ten parts, the 1870s to now. How mail-order attribution, the Yellow Pages auction, Quality Score, and automated bidding built the channel a working paid-search specialist uses today. Subscribe by RSS.

1 Before the Click: Direct Response Roots
1870s–1993 · Split testing and cost-per-lead, solved a century early
2 The CPM Era: Renting Eyeballs
1994–1997 · The banner ad and a market that paid for exposure
3 The Auction: GoTo.com and the Price of a Click
1998–2003 · Bid for placement, pay only on a click
4 Relevance Beats Money: How Google Rebuilt the Ad Auction
2000–2003 · Ad Rank = Bid × CTR, and why a small advertiser can still win
5 The Land Grab: How Search Became a Three-Company Business
2003–2006 · AdSense, the Yahoo acquisitions, and free Analytics
6 When PPC Became a Job: The Optimization Decade
2005–2011 · Quality Score grows teeth and a craft forms around relevance
7 The Second Auction: How Social Learned to Sell Interruption
2007–2014 · Search sells demand that exists; social manufactures it
8 The Yellow Pages Comes Back: Mobile, Local, and Pay-Per-Lead
2011–2017 · The phone, the truck, and Local Services Ads
9 The Machines Take the Wheel: Automation and the Black Box
2016–2022 · Advertiser controls removed one at a time
10 The Auction After the Click: Privacy, Antitrust, and AI
2018–2026 · Tracking and the click, both under pressure at once