Employee number 12 at Google took a company from zero revenue to $3 billion, and has shaken the media industry to its foundations.
John Battelle, fresh off his Web 2.0 conference, has posted an interview he conducted with Omid Kordestani a couple of months back for his Business 2.0 column. In the article, we find that the former overseer of Netscape’s banner advertising sales is aiming even higher for Google.
Among the insights about AdWords and AdSense, Kordestani noted how Google would have fallen back on other online advertising options, but the company really believed they had found a winner with their product:
It quickly became apparent that AdWords was working. The model was perfect because people were willing to try something out for $1,000 and see if they could get enough leads to justify additional spending. And as we gradually built a customer base, it had this nice trend line, up and to the right.
That trend has been a jittery seismograph printout for the rest of the media industry. No less a presence than WPP’s CEO Martin Sorrell, fresh from dealing with the Neil French kerfuffle, feels the icy grip of evolution clutching at his throat:
“There are major changes and we don’t understand the speed and scale at which they’re taking place,” the head of the world’s second-largest advertising and marketing company said at a conference held by the Internet Advertising Bureau.
He described a media landscape in which traditional media such as print and television are steadily losing ground to their new media rivals.
“I think there’s a certain amount of panic among media owners,” Sorrell added. “Most of these companies, ours included I suppose, are run by 50- or 60-year-olds who have trouble getting it, and who really don’t want to see change on their watch.”
David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
