Google in shock reveal of AdSense revenue shares. Cut is 51 per cent

[TrafficProducer]

Google in shock reveal of AdSense revenue shares (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/25/google_adsense_revenue_cuts_revealed/).

Google has revealed exactly how much revenue it shares with third-party websites who run text advertisements brokered through its AdSense service.

With a Monday blog post (http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/05/adsense-revenue-share.html), the company said that under its AdSense for content program — which serves those familiar "Ads by Google" onto webpages — sites receive a 68 per cent cut of revenues. But under its AdSense for search program — where sites offer a customized Google search box — the cut is 51 per cent.

....

68% cut never changed By Cade Metz in San Francisco (http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2010/05/25/google_adsense_revenue_cuts_revealed/) • Get more from this author (http://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=Cade%20Metz)
Posted in Business (http://www.theregister.co.uk/business/), 25th May 2010 00:10 GMT

[kgun]

"Additionally, the revenue shares for AdSense for content and AdSense for search also can vary for major online publishers with whom we negotiate individual contracts."

While they don't have time to elementary communication with the small publishers.

Related WPW threads:


Enough of Google's funny AdSense policy. (http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster-forum/threads/101249-Enough-of-Google-s-funny-AdSense-policy.?p=512326&viewfull=1#post512326)
Yahoo and big money (http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster-forum/threads/101259-Yahoo-and-big-money.?p=512425&viewfull=1#post512425)
GoogleBOT and Google AdSenseBOT (http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster-forum/threads/101249-Enough-of-Google-s-funny-AdSense-policy.?p=512326&viewfull=1#post512326)

Thank you for sharing this information.

[dburdon]

Is there any external auditing of the split? Does every publisher get exactly the same share? Regardless of scale and negotiating leverage? Or are these figures just an average?

[C0ldf1re]

Lots of small publishers have gradually been realizing the truth about AdSucks. But it is only when the advertisers vote with their money, and move to more cost-effective advertising agencies, that the situation will improve.

[Crawdad]

Lots of small publishers have gradually been realizing the truth about AdSucks. But it is only when the advertisers vote with their money, and move to more cost-effective advertising agencies, that the situation will improve.

Agreed. Until then, they'll stay on top.

[StonePilot]

Big kudos to Google for letting this be known. I have been on the other side - spending upwards of several million $USD with the company that I work with, it's interesting to see how the money is spread out.l

[whipnet]

That seems excessive, but I get a big, fat check every month from them that I can't reproduce in any other program.

*

[aattwood]

To me this seems like an incredibly generous split. seeing as that all I needed to do was cut and paste a bit of code onto my site. Google built the machine that runs the ads, owns the customers that spend on the ads and on top of that they give me a big cut. Sometimes I think people complain for the sake of it. I say thank you google adense

[internet marketing tools]

Pros and cons with everything in life I guess.

As a an advertising site if you accept googles chunck cut
you negate the need to go out and find advertiers for yourself.
There would be quite a lot of admin / sales / time overheads etc.

Movign away from google may make more sense / become easier if you had
decent traffic volume and operated in a focussed niche.

Seeing the google cut percentage may just encourage a few more
to at least experiment with serving their own ppc adds.
In house affiliate links could perhaps fill the initial add slots.

It would not be rocket science to query google to see who was paying for adverts on their network in your chosen niche. A quick email to them proposing better value than "greedy" google will get you some new advertisers.

If not earning more than with google..you can always go back to them.
Possibly the sort of thing you could split test.
eg picture the add zone on your site displaying google X% of the time and your own in house adds Y % of the time.

You might even get google to give you greater share to get you 100% back on board with them.

Cheers
Mick

[pedroneiraf]

Honestly, I thought Google's cut was even bigger than what they have disclosed... nevertheless, It's great to bring more transparency to the market.

[Manhydra]

"AdSense for content publishers, who make up the vast majority of our AdSense publishers, earn a 68% revenue share worldwide. This means we pay 68% of the revenue that we collect from advertisers for AdSense for content ads that appear on your sites."

Although this explains how much of AdSense revenue Google shares with its publishers, it doesn't indicate specifically whether this share is based on publishers' earnings based on CPM or CPC. It probably applies to both, but one can never know for certain.

"Additionally, when considering different monetization options, we encourage you to focus on the total revenue generated from your site, rather than just revenue share, which can be misleading. For example, you would receive $68 with AdSense for content for $100 worth of advertising that appeared on your site. If another ad network offers an 80% revenue share, but is only able to collect $50 from ads served on your site, you would earn $40. In this case, a higher revenue share wouldn’t make up for the lower revenue yield of the other ad network."

I'm not quite sure what they're trying to prove or if this is how they perceive this, but IMO higher revenue share is more significant, and lucrative, that just higher revenues overall. The overall revenue is generated based on how well a web site performs and how much ad networks charge advertisers, whether on CPM, CPC, or CPA (the latter of which you really have to perform well and ad networks have to charge high in order to receive something decent). But in any case, the web site is the core of this revenue generation; depending on how much an ad network charges, if your web site generates $100 in revenue for each of x number of ad networks on which it participates, which percentage rate would you choose?

So, ad revenue share can be misleading, eh Google? Sure, whatever you say. ;-)