Google finally publishes information on Adsense share

[Sparhawke]

Inside AdSense: The AdSense revenue share

The AdSense revenue share
Today, in the spirit of greater transparency with AdSense publishers, we’re sharing the revenue shares for our two main AdSense products — AdSense for content and AdSense for search.

As you may already know, AdSense is comprised of several products. The most popular are AdSense for content, which allows publishers to generate revenue from ads placed alongside web content, and AdSense for search, which allows publishers to place a custom Google search engine on their site and generate revenue from ads shown next to search results. Since AdSense for content and AdSense for search offer publishers different services, the revenue shared with publishers differs for each of these products.

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. The remaining portion that we keep reflects Google's costs for our continued investment in AdSense — including the development of new technologies, products and features that help maximize the earnings you generate from these ads. It also reflects the costs we incur in building products and features that enable our AdWords advertisers to serve ads on our AdSense partner sites. Since launching AdSense for content in 2003, this revenue share has never changed.

We pay our AdSense for search partners a 51% revenue share, worldwide, for the search ads that appear through their implementations. As with AdSense for content, the proportion of revenue that we keep reflects our costs, including the significant expense, research and development involved in building and enhancing our core search and AdWords technologies. The AdSense for search revenue share has remained the same since 2005, when we increased it.

We also offer additional AdSense products including AdSense for mobile applications, AdSense for feeds, and AdSense for games. We aren’t disclosing the revenue shares for these products at this time because they’re quickly evolving, and we're still learning about the costs associated with supporting them. Revenue shares for these products can vary from product to product since our costs in building and maintaining these products can vary significantly. 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.

Of course, we can’t guarantee that the revenue share will never change (our costs may change significantly, for example), but we don’t have any current plans to do so for any AdSense product. Over the next few months we’ll begin showing the revenue shares for AdSense for content and AdSense for search right in the AdSense interface.

We hope this additional transparency helps you gain more insight into your business partnership with Google. We believe our revenue share is very competitive, and the vast number of advertisers who compete to appear on AdSense sites helps to ensure that you’re earning the most from every ad impression. 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.

We’re continually working on helping you improve the returns from your site while giving you more control and insight into AdSense. For example, we continue to improve our technology so that we can deliver even better matched ads and attract even more advertisers to your websites. Additionally, we recently began providing more granular ways to find and review the ads on your site, as well as the ability to filter more ads by category. We’re also focused on finding other ways to make AdSense better for you. As you may remember, last December, we asked for your ideas and feedback on how we can make AdSense better. We received more than 600 suggestions and 35,000 votes, and we’ve been reviewing them all.

Keep an eye on this blog for updates about the new features we’re building to help you maximize your advertising revenues.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President, Product Management
Monday, May 24, 2010 at 7:00:00 AM

Finally nice to have it from the horses mouth that just short of 70% goes to our pockets, maybe it will stop all the endless speculation and guessing?

 

[freedom30]

Google Reveals Revenue Split with AdSense Publishers

Google Reveals Revenue Split with AdSense Publishers

 

[HostMantis]

68% ?

I don't think they are actually giving their publishers quite that much. I think it's more like 25% or less.

 

[Sameh]

Google Reveals AdSense Revenue Share

I saw the news posted on several forums & blogs today :


Inside AdSense: The AdSense revenue share

 

[hotrod12]

Wow 68% share sounds very high in order for them to keep a decent profit

 

[abdussamad]

Wow this is big news. There has been so much speculation about this over the years. Definitely good to know!

 

[snoop]

I think they have made the right move disclosing this and it will be positive for them. eg for the average small website: why try and get a whole lot of advertisers directly when gGoogle does all that hard work and pays out 68%?

 

[Jaco]

Hilarious to find this out and look back on all those people who speculated it was figures along the lines of 2%, 8%, 15%, etc...

 

[snoop]

Hilarious to find this out and look back on all those people who speculated it was figures along the lines of 2%, 8%, 15%, etc...

I think that is mainly from people with low quality traffic. They probably don't realise the advertiser is being billed at a low price per click rather than what they see in the adwords tool.

 

[mwzd]

They're lying, if they really want transparency they should list each accounts revenue % within the account.

I doubt they pay 68% outside the USA, even with this alleged disclosure.

Our adsense revenues have dropped to 1% of what they used to be, no longer viable for us, just keep the ads in as placeholders till we get higher paying ads.

 

[enlytend]

I think that is mainly from people with low quality traffic. They probably don't realise the advertiser is being billed at a low price per click rather than what they see in the adwords tool.

:bingo: If your traffic doesn't convert your entire adsense account will get smartpriced ... as it should! Advertisers aren't paying to support adsense publishers, they're paying to get business. If they had to pay premium prices for non premium traffic, they'd leave in droves and then there wouldn't BE any Adwords OR Adsense.

The other thing people don't understand is that those bid estimates in the adwords tool are for the 1st - 3rd placements on the SEARCH network. Adsense isn't the search network, it's the CONTENT network. Bids are much lower on the content network than they are on the search network. Use the numbers as a guideline, but you can't take them literally.

Also, keep in mind that the more Adsense you display on a page, the lower the bids will be by the time you hit that 3rd ad block ... often they're a LOT lower.

I think it was a good move for G. to come out and provide this information, but it won't stop the conspiracy theories from the diehard tinfoil hat crowd .

 

[DubDubDubDot]

They're lying

It is highly unlikely that Google is fabricating the figures in their disclosure. More plausible is that your traffic is low quality.

 

[mrjohn]

:bingo: If your traffic doesn't convert your entire adsense account will get smartpriced ... as it should! Advertisers aren't paying to support adsense publishers

Much agreed.

 

[snoop]

They're lying, if they really want transparency they should list each accounts revenue % within the account.

I doubt they pay 68% outside the USA, even with this alleged disclosure.

Our adsense revenues have dropped to 1% of what they used to be, no longer viable for us, just keep the ads in as placeholders till we get higher paying ads.

If revenue drops 99% then something is majorly wrong with that traffic in my view.

 

[mrjohn]

Indeed. That is an absurd drop. Heck, I question people when they're whining about 25% drops. A 99% drop? The system made a clear -- and likely correct -- decision regarding the quality of traffic its advertisers were being stuck with.

 

[Archangel]

Agreed. 99 whole percent?

If revenue drops 99% then something is majorly wrong with that traffic in my view.

 

[enlytend]

If revenue drops 99% then something is majorly wrong with that traffic in my view.

Ditto on that.

BTW, poorly-converting traffic anywhere on your sites, even if it's just one PAGE, can smart price your entire ACCOUNT. (Smart pricing is an account-wide filter.)

The good news is if you remove the adsense from the offending page(s) or site(s)your epc will normally come back up.

 

[ClearSky]

Ditto on that.

BTW, poorly-converting traffic anywhere on your sites, even if it's just one PAGE, can smart price your entire ACCOUNT. (Smart pricing is an account-wide filter.)

The good news is if you remove the adsense from the offending page(s) or site(s)your epc will normally come back up.

How can someone find out if their Adsense account has been Smartpriced? And, which pages are offending?

Thanks!!

 

[enlytend]

That's the tricky part - they don't tell you. Further complicated by ads that convert but which have a low bid price to begin with. Experiments and educated guesses....

The key thing is that the better your traffic converts to leads/sales for the advertisers, the more resistant you are to smart pricing. If your traffic is just curious passers-by, if the ads aren't relevant to the reason people visit your site, or if there's a country "mismatch" between the advertisers and visitors, chances are the ads won't convert well.

 

[mwzd]

:bingo: If your traffic doesn't convert your entire adsense account will get smartpriced ... as it should!

Can you please link me to any 'official' word from Google on smart pricing?

Also, keep in mind that the more Adsense you display on a page, the lower the bids will be by the time you hit that 3rd ad block ... often they're a LOT lower.

This might be worth looking into, most of our sites have the full gamut, 3 adsense ad blocks + 3 adsense link blocks.

It is highly unlikely that Google is fabricating the figures in their disclosure. More plausible is that your traffic is low quality.

The funny bit is the traffic hasn't changed, what has is the number of pages they show ads for and the ctr.

Google is a corporate enterprise, not the 'holy one' as people like to think, the only reason they're even releasing 'any' information is due to the fact that they're getting serious heat from the 1000s of new ad networks out there. These might not make a major dent on Googs earnings, but the tipping point when they will is fast approaching.

BTW, poorly-converting traffic anywhere on your sites, even if it's just one PAGE, can smart price your entire ACCOUNT. (Smart pricing is an account-wide filter.)

Again, official source please on smart pricing.

That's the tricky part - they don't tell you.

Ever wonder why?

 

[blaknite]

Ever wonder why?

Not really. The answer is obvious. If you tell the spammers what factors you watch to determine that their junk is spam, they'll get around your filters in no time. Google doesn't disclose in order to keep the system fair.

 

[enlytend]

Adsense Smart Pricing - official statements

Again, official source please on smart pricing.

What is smart pricing? - AdWords Help

One poorly converting site can “smart price” an entire AdSense account « JenSense - this is the post that broke the news. If you don't know who she is, read the blog bio.

Inside AdSense: The facts about smart pricing - Google's response to the blog post

Hate to read? Short and to the point, posted a couple of years later - post#3660222 (AdsenseAdvisor is an official Google spokesperson on that forum):

Adsense Account type confusion

In case you get the login / subscribe message, this is what ASA said:

smart pricing occurs when our data shows that a click likely will not lead to a conversion for the advertiser (such as a purchase, phone call, or newsletter sign-up), and we reduce the price the advertiser pays for this click.