Until now, the exact number of advertisers that Google had under their collective belts was a closely-guarded secret…they could tell you, but then they would have to kill you. Google would only say that it had “hundreds of thousands” of advertisers.
That’s quite an understatement.
In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Google stated that it had 1 million advertisers as of 2007. If history is any indicator, we can likely expect that number to be much higher now. The number of advertisers on Google has grown at a pretty steady rate…
89,000 in 2003
201,000 in 2004
360,000 in 2005
600,000 in 2006
Ben Schachter with UBS said that he expects the actual number is likely to be between 1.3 million and 1.5 million now. Google declined to comment on the current size of its advertising base.
“It is a number that people have wanted to know for a long time,” Mr. Schachter said. More advertisers means more revenue — and more revenue, on average, for every search query — for a couple of reasons: a larger number of queries will have ads matched against them; and on popular queries, competition for placement will be more intense, and as a result, ad prices, which are set by auction, will be higher.
Mr. Schachter said that the numbers bode well for the Internet giant. “It says that there is still a heck of a lot of room to grow this business,” he said.
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