How Google Is Revolutionizing the Ad Game: "The difference between how Google and everybody else approaches advertising is clear, and it flows directly from the user-centric culture that founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page inculcated in the company. 'From the beginning we had the approach that the user's success drives the success of the ads,' says Armstrong, 'and that could not have been a more foreign concept to the advertising community.'

"Most advertisers seek to stimulate demand by reaching a certain group of people with their message. In order to do so, they figure out which demographic segments are likely to respond to their messages and craft the ads accordingly. Google throws this model out the door. For Google, the key to an ad's success is not reaching the right demographic, but understanding the attributes of the product itself. When you can properly identify those attributes, you can buy links to keywords that describe or relate to them. The 'demographic' is self-selecting."