GoTo (not to be confused with Go.com or Go2Net) was an Idealab spin off and was the first company to successfully provide a pay-for-placement search service.

[5][6] In February 1998, GoTo offered advertisers the option of bidding on how much they would be willing to pay to appear at the top of results in response to specific searches.

In June 1999, GoTo launched a tool set direct traffic centre (dtc) to enable advertisers access to keywords and real time bidding.

A similar service had been offered by Open Text in 1996, but this precipitated outcries and bad publicity because searchers at the time did not want the search process more commercialized.

Through partnerships, Overture enabled portals such as MSN and Yahoo to monetize the hundreds of millions of web searches made each day on their sites.

Meanwhile, Google operates under a more sophisticated model, which ranks paid ads on the basis of bid price as well as prior click-through rates.

Key players in the Panama project were Brian Acton, David Henke & Qi Lu.

The platform provided advertisers with a digital dashboard where they can manage their marketing campaigns, aim ads geographically, and test their effectiveness.

It included interactive tools that suggest to advertisers what to bid based on their budget and the number of users they want to attract.

[13] During the tenure of Marissa Mayer as Yahoo's CEO she started a new advertising platform project under the name Gemini.

Prior to its acquisition by Yahoo, Overture initiated infringement proceedings under this patent against FindWhat.com in January 2002 and Google in April 2002.

In February 2002, Google introduced a service called AdWords Select that allowed marketers to bid for higher placement in marked sections - a tactic that had some similarities to Overture's search-listing auctions.

In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging, among other things, that its search advertising trademark enforcement practices have unreasonably restrained competition in violation of the FTC Act.