Google Has Well Over A Million Advertisers

Google: 1 Million Advertisers in 2007, More Now from the New York Times reports that Google has reported in their latest SEC filing that they have one million advertisers as of 2007. Now, that number is likely a lot more now, in 2009.

An analyst from UBS estimated Google has between 1.3 million and 1.5 million advertisers. Why is this important, because according to the analyst, it shows there is still room for a lot more growth in terms of the advertiser base. The New York Times piece says Google’s advertiser growth started at 89,000 in 2003, to 201,000 in 2004, 360,000 in 2005 and 600,000 in 2006.

To me, I wonder what Google considers an “advertiser.” Often agencies will manage hundreds of different clients. Is an advertiser the agency or the clients of an agency? In any event, we do know from Google how much revenue they pull in from the search ads.

Google investors are always looking for more data from Google, but even when Google went public, they are still very stingy on what data they release and what they do not. If you remember the pre-IPO days, we knew almost nothing about the company’s finances, not we know a lot, but not a lot compared to what we know about other companies.