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Hi everyone, and thanks for joining us on AdSense's 10th anniversary,
I'm Scott Scheffer
Vice President of Publisher Business Solutions here at Google.
And I can't think of a better time to sit down with Susan Wojcicki,
our Senior Vice President of Advertising and Commerce at Google,
to talk about how AdSense came from an experimental product
to something that's used by more than two million publishers worldwide.
Now, since we couldn't have all 2 million of our partners join us,
we're joined by three representative partners.
One each from Latin America, the United States, and Europe.
So why don't we kick things off with some introductions.
Susan can you start us off, please?
Sure, first it's great to be here
and celebrating the 10th anniversary of AdSense.
I'm Susan Wojcicki, I'm the Senior Vice President
responsible for ads and commerce
and I've worked on AdSense for 10 years.
So it's quite an important milestone for me personally to be here
and to see all the growth of AdSense over the last 10 years.
Great, thank you, it's great to have you here.
It's great to be here.
And so, we're also joined by David of archdaily.com.
He hails from Santiago, Chile.
Hello, David Balsuto, as you say,
the co-founder and editor-in-chief of arch daily,
a web based start-up based in Santiago de Chile.
Our mission is to deliver inspiration, knowledge and truth
to the architects who will have the talent to improve the quality of life
of the next three billion people who will move in cities in the near future.
And we reach a global audience of more than 300,000 people every day.
So we have been working with Google AdSense for the past six years
in order to deliver quality contextual advertising to this worldwide audience.
Great, thank you for joining, David.
We also have Kathryn of blurtit.com from Norwich, England.
Yup, my name is Kathryn, I'm the Business Manager of blurtit.com.
We're an online question and answer site
with the aim to be helpful and to answer as many questions as we can.
The business wouldn't have got off the ground
if it wasn't for AdSense back in 2006.
Great, thank you for joining.
And last but not least we have Sam of piZap.com
from Los Gatos, California, just down the road from here. Sam.
Hi, I'm Sam Crisco from piZap.com,
we're an online photo editing and collaging tool
and we've been using AdSense since 2007
and we really owe our entire business success to AdSense.
Great, thank you.
Well, I'm going to start off by asking Susan a couple of questions.
And then we'll take questions from our live partners
and then from our Google+ audience.
So Susan, you were here at the beginning.
Can you tell us how AdSense got started?
What was the initial vision for the product way back then?
So, when we first got started with AdSense, we had --
We realized that our advertisers wanted to have more,
be able to extend their reach and have more clicks,
and so we thought, how can we take Google's technology
and how can we extend it across the web.
And at the same time we also thought how --
wouldn't it be great if we could take all the work that we do
for monetization of our site
and we enable everyone on the web
everyone who has a website to be able to use that.
And, the amazing thing about technology
is that you can have a pretty small team
and you can put it up on the web
and then people all over the world can find it and can use it.
And so that's why it's actually really great to hear these three stories
of the publishers who are joining us today
because that was our vision then,
was how do we enable publishers all over the world
to be able to use our monetization and to be able to build a business.
And also sort of really related targeted ads
so ads that are specific not just to the topic, not like sports,
but actually if the page is about a certain sports team
how do we have ads related to that specific sports team.
So, that was the vision
and I'll say it took a lot of people,
a lot of time at Google to do that.
I've been fortunate that I've been able to work on AdSense for 10 years.
But I know in my 10 years that it took many many people
to be able to get to where we are right now.
But that was the vision, and it was --
we had developed some technology early on and we weren't really sure --
It was called Phil, and we weren't really sure what we would use it for
but it turned out it was great for AdSense and --
And the rest is history.
Awesome, thank you. And so, AdSense was started in 2003.
That was a long time ago,
obviously AdSense and the product has changed quite a bit in that time
and so has Google,
so why is AdSense so important to Google?
Well, AdSense is really important to Google I think for so many different reasons.
I'll just start with the fact that we really care about the web
and AdSense is a way of enabling content owners
to be able to monetize their site
and in order to have the web you need a lot of content owners
and that's what makes the web such an amazing place
is the fact that anyone can create content
and can put up their point of view or tell their story or generate content
and the goal was to enable any of those sites
to be able to focus on the content,
not necessarily on the monetization but on the content.
So we really care about the web, we care about generating, supporting publishers
and I think also AdSense is important for advertisers
I mean we think about the whole ecosystem
and we think about advertisers being able to extend their reach
and being in front of the right audience
and reaching the right -- being on the right pages of different publishers.
And then we think about users and --
our goal has always been to serve the most relevant advertising,
we make sure that the ads are relevant to the page.
And so, I think, if you look at the whole ecosystem
it's really helped fuel the web for advertisers, publishers and users.
It's really been an amazing network effect with millions of advertisers
and millions of publishers and billions of users
interacting with the system every day around the world.
Yeah, so we have two million publishers now,
and that's a pretty amazing number,
and I just saw that the average number of checks that we send out every month
is 100,000.
And if you think about that,
that's probably more than most Fortune 500 companies are sending out.
So the fact that we're sending that out every month
means that there are lots and lots of businesses and lots of people globally
that are using AdSense to run their businesses and pay their bills.
Right, just like our three partners that joined us today.
Yes.
So that's kind of where we've come from.
Where do you see AdSense going
in the next couple of years, next 10 years?
What's in store over the next decade for AdSense?
Well, the last ten years have been really --
I mean, if you think about 10 years ago, how much the web has changed,
we didn't have mobile 10 years ago, we didn't have video,
and so we've been really, really focused on
making sure that whatever comes,
we are going to enable AdSense monetization for it.
Apps, video, mobile
and so I think we're going to continue to see a lot of innovation
in the computing space.
For example what's going to happen in terms of TV?
Are we going to start seeing a lot more digital
and a lot more Internet experiences on the TV?
Now we have wearable devices, Glass is an example of that.
So really our goal with AdSense is wherever people can create content,
wherever users are going,
we want to be able to enable a monetization solution.
But we want to do it in something --
I think the other thing we've really always tried with AdSense
is to make it to be a native format.
So something that works really well for users
and that works really well for that publisher,
and so that it's part of the experience
and I think we're going to innovate a lot of the formats,
and in how we display the ads
in terms of making the ads more beautiful
and richer as people have faster connections.
So I think there is going to be a lot of opportunity for us in the next 10 years
to innovate and continue to make Adsense
just a really powerful and useful tool
for publishers, advertisers and users.
Right, that makes total sense.
I think, as the number of formats and media
proliferate through the web and throughout the world
we clearly want to help our partners focus on creating great content
and provide that monetization vehicle for them regardless of their content
whether it's on video, or it's on mobile or what have you.
And you can even imagine a future
where today we spend a lot of time helping our partners
with a product to identify the right ad format, the right size
and optimize those ad units
but down the road you can imagine a vision where
a partner could optimize their entire site with AdSense,
which would be really exciting.
Yeah, and I think one of the things
we've actually started to do a lot more with AdSense
and why AdSense turned out to be
a much more complicated business than we thought
is because we wound up also being able to enable publishers
think about their directly sold inventory
and that led to our acquisition of DoubleClick
which was a pretty big acquisition
but how can we enable all optimization across all parts of their site.
Optimization is just one word
but it means many many different things
and at the end optimization can be really, really powerful.
It could make all the difference in the world
in terms of making the site perform better, and perform better for users.
Right, it might not just be revenue but could be user experience,
it could be all sorts of things like that.
Definitely, so how do we enable publishers
to be able to get a good understanding of what are the right number of ads
that they should be serving on their page.
We'd really like to be able to give more guidance there,
be able to help them get understanding about their content,
what content is working really well
and figure out just dynamically.
I mean, ideally you just push a button and everything automatically optimizes
and we help you figure out the right experience and the right ads.
Sure, especially with the number of new devices coming on, right?
Mobile phones and tablets and phablets
and video and TV and everything.
Yes, so we're working on it. It's coming.
Fantastic. Alright, well I think now
we're going to open up to some questions from our live partners.
And for everyone tuned in on G+
you can post your questions at #AdSense10onair on Google+.
So we're going to start things off with David.
David, do you have a question for Susan?
Yes. Well, as publishers we need to be always on the edge
of how people are consuming content on the Internet
or we're going to become irrelevant to them.
So I wonder how AdSense is going to go with us
and embrace these new formats
and new habits of consuming content.
Yeah, I think we definitely recognize that we need to help you,
help all publishers
figure out the right trade-offs between users and monetization
and also there are so many different ways that you now as a publisher
can also publish your content,
mobile, mobile web, apps, desktop
and part of our goal is to enable you to be able to --
to help you in all of those areas in all of those different devices
and I think that's one of the challenges of being a publisher
figuring out what's the right content, what do people want,
how may ads to serve, what parts should you sell direct.
These are complicated questions, I think,
I'll just say, from one of the people who focuses on this full time,
with a big team of people,
these are hard questions.
That's why our goal is to be able to focus on that
so that publishers can focus on generating the content
and we can help them with all the other components
because we know it's complicated
and it can take a lot of work.
Part of the power of Google is we're facing the same challenge ourselves
so we need to learn how to do that
across all of our different properties all in different places etc.
Yeah, I think that's actually been a real big plus of ours
is that we are also a publisher.
We have YouTube, we have our own site,
and so all the lessons that we have and we've learned on our own site
we take into consideration, we think about AdSense,
we think about our publisher network,
and we try to figure out how does this apply to the network most effectively.
Great. Alright, well, thanks for your question.
So I've got another question here for you, Susan.
Sure.
What's your favorite thing about AdSense?
I would say my favorite thing about AdSense
is hearing the publisher stories.
And I'm just always amazed
at how creative people are in the world.
People are able to take this solution that we've created
and they're able to use it on their sites
and they're able to create the most amazing content sites.
So when we see that we were able to help and be a part of that,
it's really, really gratifying for us.
We see that people are able to pursue their passion.
People are able to quit their job and say,
"I always had this passion in this one area
and I am able to now build a business as a result of that."
That's incredibly gratifying.
Yeah, it's an amazing story
if you think about the fact that Google shared about seven billion dollars
in earnings with partners last year:
certainly contributes to people being able to follow their passion
and build businesses around the world.
- Yeah, that's an amazing number. - Yeah, absolutely.
- For 10 years. - For 10 years, that's right.
Ongoing, right? More for the future.
So again if you have a question on the G+ hangout
#AdSense10onair on Google+.
So let's turn to Kathryn, anything you'd like to ask Susan?
Yes, I was just wondering Susan,
what do you envisage for the next 10 years of advertising?
Yeah, the next ten years in advertising.
- That's an easy question right? - Oh, yeah, I wish I knew.
Part of our job is to try to create that and to try to build that.
We think a lot of times that advertising is just information:
how do we serve the right information to people
at the time that they want it?
And I think one of the things that's really --
over the next 10 years will change a lot is all of the mobile devices.
That's something we're focused on now
but I think we're going to continue to see more,
the emergence of mobile becoming really substantial
in pretty much every publisher's business.
So we're really focused on thinking about how to enable,
and take advantage of that.
What are the right formats for mobile,
how do you incorporate location in a way that users are happy with
but delivers the right examples?
When you think about that you really should be able to deliver
really useful, really amazing ads for our users,
and I think that will help publishers
because it will provide monetization and will be useful for them.
So, I think mobile is definitely a huge thing for us
and probably all the video.
When you think about video
it's really not been on the web for that long
and in the past we just didn't have the computing power
and the Internet --
the speeds to be able to serve so much video up
and I think that will be another area that will be increasingly popular:
more sites having video, us being able to serve more ads
that our users are choosing to see.
So we've been on the YouTube network,
we've been encouraging
our advertisers to use TrueView
which enables a user to choose if they want to see that ad or not.
We find that has, overall, made the ecosystem really positive
because advertisers are creating ads users want to see
and publishers are showing an experience
where users are choosing what they want to see,
so it' really positive.
I think introducing more choice for users,
more different types of formats, more mobile,
all of that will really drive the next 10 years.
Great, so let me pick up on one of the things you mentioned there
which was advertisers.
Because they're a huge part of the equation for AdSense, right?
Yes.
So when you talk to advertisers,
I know you have meeting with large advertisers and agencies,
what do you hear from them?
What do they want out of our partner network, out of our publishers?
Yeah, I think that's a great question.
We always think about the ecosystem
because at the end of the day
having all parts work is what we need to have.
It turns out if we have all parts happy that optimizes it for everybody.
I think what we hear from advertisers is,
first of all they love the reach,
they love being on all these publisher sites,
they like that it's one way, one network
that they can reach lots of different sites at the same time.
But we've also really invested a lot more with our publishers in giving them,
you know, with our advertisers, in giving them more control,
and also in the last couple of years we've focused a lot more
on our display advertising business
and being able to get advertisers -- some of our larger advertisers --
to be able to spend on the Display Network,
where they are able to get the reach
but they also have then the control that they want to have.
What we see is advertisers really want to be able to have that reach
but control with it
and for the display part
we've actually started exploring new types of formats.
We recently released some of the engagement ad formats
where there's a lightbox -- - They're amazing.
Yeah, they're beautiful.
And they open up and you can see a catalogue,
you can see a video or can you can see something streamed.
Which is amazing that you can see an ad
and in the ad is like a streamed event, a live streamed event.
So those are the kind of things that I think
advertisers get really excited about.
Like, "How can I get my video, how can I get my catalogue
all over that network in front of the right users?".
And we're really committed to our publishers but also to our advertisers
in developing the solutions that we know will work for them.
Great, so, Sam, we'll give you the last question here. No pressure.
Great, so my question is, what do you envision,
or what do you see as some of the greatest challenges
and the greatest opportunities
for digital advertising over the next couple of years?
Well, I think there are definitely
lots of challenges and lots of opportunities.
Probably the biggest opportunity
is the fact that advertisers go where users go
and users are all moving a lot of their media habits to digital.
And we see that just happening in terms of them watching --
reading more of their news online, on tablets, radio --
It's hard to figure out who's who across all of that, right?
Reaching the same user with the same message, right?
So yeah, there's definitely -- as users move to more devices,
like the cross-device issue has been more of an issue,
that's definitely been a challenge.
But I think there is an opportunity as more and more users move online
and spend more of their time there.
Part of the challenge has been how do we enable advertisers
to move more of their budgets online.
I mean a lot of the traditional media has been around for a long time
so marketers have traditional ways that they spend their money,
traditional metrics that they use, and it's also easy.
They can move tens of millions of dollars,
hundreds of millions of dollars and they can move that pretty easily,
and so how do we enable online advertising
to really be easier for a traditional marketer
to be able to get the control and the reach
and make it easy for them
to be able to buy and get the audiences that they want.
And so I think, we have to remember
that online advertising as an industry overall is still really young. It hasn't --
You've compared it to your children --
I've compared it at times to my children:
it's a relatively new industry
and when you think about it we're a teenager
and teenagers are good at some things
but they're also not quite adults yet,
as anyone who lives with teenagers knows,
so I think that's where we are.
I think in the next 10 years we're going to mature
and we're going to become more adult. We'll have more capabilities
and I'm hopeful that more traditional advertisers
will also come on and spend dollars
and get the control that they want
and the reach they want in the formats they want
and that's what we're working on.
And that's all great news for publishers
because that means that that's investment in the web
and on the Internet and all publishers will benefit from that.
Great. Well, thanks Susan and thank you, Sam, for that last great question,
I think it lived up to our expectations.
So before we wrap up there are a couple of things I'd like to announce
for publishers today to mark the 10th anniversary at Google.
First, we want to help publishers continue to grow with AdSense,
so today we're announcing a free masterclass
that you can sign up to become even more of an AdSense expert.
You can check out our blog for more details and to register.
And secondly we want to hear what you've been able to accomplish
as a result of AdSense,
so share your story with us on Google+ Community at #AdSense10
by completing the following sentence:
"Because of AdSense I ..."
was able to pay my mortgage,
I was able to put my kids through college, etc etc.
So for more details on that visit the AdSense Google+ page.
So to wrap up, let me first say thanks to Susan for sharing her time with us.
And to our three live partners who joined us on the Hangout
and also to the thousands of publishers that joined us on the Hangout on Air.
It's a great day for AdSense's 10th anniversary
and here's to the next 10 years.
Yes, and I also want to say thank you
to all the publishers who have been with us.
Whether you have just joined
or you started with us, you were one of our first publishers,
I want to say thank you to all of you.
I also want to say thank you to all the people,
both internal and external
who have helped us build this business.
And I know from building any business:
it takes a village to make it happen.
It's because we've had so many great people along the way
that have given us feedback
that have given us all their hard work and their input
in terms of making it happen.
We're really committed to continuing to grow it,
continuing to make AdSense a success
for all of you as a way of monetizing your sites.
We're really looking forward to the next 10 years.
So thank you everybody.