Google's market share of global digital ad revenues 2016-2019
Google and advertising Founded in California in 1996, Google was primarily created as an online search engine enabling users to generate algorithm-based search results, based on internal page rankings. Although Google Search is arguably the company’s most popular product, Google generates the majority of its revenue through advertising. In 2016, the majority of the search giant’s revenue was generated through advertising on Google Sites and the second-largest share of revenue came from advertising on Google network sites. In total, Google’s 2016 net revenues amounted to 89.46 billion US dollars, up from 74.54 billion in 2015. Overall, global online advertising expenditure is projected to surpass 335 billion US dollars in 2020.
In 2016, Google was also ranked first in terms of digital advertising revenue of selected online companies, generating more than double the amount of revenue as second-ranked Facebook.
Digital advertising does not only include search marketing on Google but social, mobile, video, rich media and display advertising. During a 2016 survey of professional marketers, it was found the majority of marketers were planning to increase their social advertising expenditure during the year. With the spread of smartphones and other mobile devices, mobile advertising is also undergoing strong growth trends.