Google Ads is 25 years old today
You can say a lot about Google Ads, but you can't argue with platform's trajectory over the past 25 years.
- Google Ads is 25 today
- Its next technological evolution is all about AI
- Agentic AI now promises to reshape digital marketing.
Google Ads today celebrated its 25th birthday with a clear (and perhaps a slightly predictable) message: that its new AI systems are helping the market-leading marketing-tech go from strength to strength.
Vidhya Srinivasan, Google's GM for Ads and Commerce, proclaimed gratitude to advertisers (who buy the ads), the publishers and creators (who provide the shop window for the ads) and the Google Ads team (who build and innovate the platforms that run them).
It comes exactly 25 years on from the first iteration of Google Ads on 23 October 2000.
Since then, what was one of the first link-based ad systems (delivering low-fi links for mostly 'dial up' internet users, free from image or video assets), has become a complex and sophisticated multi-channel, multi-modal platform that runs *most of the internet's ads.
“Twenty-five years ago, we began an effort rooted in a powerful idea:We could harness the emerging digital world to help businesses grow in ways almost unimaginable at the time," Srinivasan said.
Google Ads' next technological evolution is all about AI, with the current push very much emphasising the power of 'agentic' intelligence, which aims to autonomously and semi-autonomously streamline, optimise, and presumably more profitably, put ads in front of targeted consumers.
Or, as Srinivasan puts it: "Generative AI is transforming digital marketing, and I am so proud to see us leading the way with agentic capabilities, tools that automate and optimize campaigns and cutting-edge creative generation."
