Tomorrow’s Tech Treepowered by Astra

Advertising & Marketing · Recorded milestone

Pay-per-click search ads

Recorded year1998

Bill Gross's GoTo.com lets advertisers bid for top places in search results and pay only when someone clicks.

Explore this milestone on the interactive map

Built on

World Wide WebRecorded · 1991enables
Web banner adRecorded · 1994enables

Led to

Contextual ads on any siteRecorded · 2003enables
Ads inside AI chatbotsRecorded · 2023enables
Marketing aimed at AI shoppersForecast · ~2028enables
AI answers outsell search adsForecast · ~2033enables

Sources & evidence

Additional source

Dataset updated 2026-10-18. This individual record has not been separately re-reviewed.