Google / YouTube Ads

Google’s advertising business helps businesses reach customers across Search, YouTube and other Google properties. Google Ads offers Search campaigns for purchase intent, Shopping ads for retail inventory, and YouTube video campaigns for awareness and engagement. Performance Max combines multiple Google channels in one AI-powered campaign, while App campaigns help developers acquire and re-engage users. Advertisers can pursue sales, leads, store visits or app installs.

Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, whose early search engine used links to assess web pages’ importance. YouTube, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, was acquired by Google in 2006. Sundar Pichai leads Google and Alphabet; Neal Mohan leads YouTube. Google’s advertising research includes a 2013 study of deployed click-through-rate prediction using FTRL-Proximal online learning, with techniques for sparse models, memory savings and probability calibration.

The advertising workflow extends from audience targeting to creative production: Asset Studio uses Gemini, Veo and Nano Banana to turn prompts into storyboards and finished video ads. Advertisers can connect Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager data to inform campaign AI. YouTube supplies a substantial video distribution surface: in January 2026, the company reported that YouTube Shorts averaged 200 billion daily views. Demand Gen places image and video ads across YouTube, Discover and Gmail, including when people are not actively searching.