Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)

by Adam Fisher

Brad Templeton: The brilliant thing that Google said was, “Okay. Pay per click, but if people do not click on your ad, we’re not running it.” Google charges you a fee if someone clicks on your ad. But if your ad is not performing enough, they take you out of the way, so they end up getting a minimum for every thousand impressions they do. Therefore they won’t run your ad unless it’s paying them the CPM figure they want. That was the genius! Google found a way that the advertiser could think that they were paying per click—which is what advertisers like—but they, the publisher of the website, could get paid per thousand views, which is what publishers like. They found this marriage which gave them what they wanted, and gave the advertisers the illusion that they were getting what they wanted, and of course who wins? Google wins.