Google’s Top AdWords Advertisers: Leaked Document Reveals Advertising Dollars

adAge obtained an “internal Google document” that disclosed the first half of 2010 AdWords advertising spend of Google’s customers. As you can imagine, the numbers of pretty revealing. It showed that $574 million was spent, where 1,356 advertisers spent between $10,000 and $100,000. It also showed that AT&T was Google’s largest AdWords customer in June […]

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adAge obtained an “internal Google document” that disclosed the first half of 2010 AdWords advertising spend of Google’s customers. As you can imagine, the numbers of pretty revealing.

It showed that $574 million was spent, where 1,356 advertisers spent between $10,000 and $100,000. It also showed that AT&T was Google’s largest AdWords customer in June 2010. Here are some revealing charts from adAge:

Google Ad Spend Breakdown

Google Largest Customers

AT&T spent over $8 million in June, Expedia almost $6 million, Amazon $5.85 million and eBay $4.25 million. eBay is an interesting number to me, because there were rumors it was more like $26 million per month, we do know eBay did slow down some of their Google ads for a while.

The document also shows how BP, who spent $57,000 a month is now spending $3.6 million per month. Yes, BP has been using search ads to help their image with the oil spill, but the amount they spent makes me wonder if Google turned the other way when they were violating the AdWords terms or if it was indeed just an error?

There are many revealing data points here, so check out the adAge article for more information.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.

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