If you haven’t heard the word yet, Google finally released details on how it splits AdSense revenue with smalltime (you and me) publishers. Conventional wisdom was that the split was about 70/30 in favor of the publishers, and that turns out to be pretty close to reality: publishers earn 68% of AdSense for Content earnings.
On the search side, the split isn’t as high. If you use AdSense for Search, you only get 51% of the ad revenue. Google attributes this difference to the higher costs involved in hosting search results on sites other than their own plus all the added stuff you can do with AdSense for Search, such as restricting searches to a specific set of sites, etc.
Revenues for the other AdSense variants have not been disclosed and are apparently subject to change and experimentation as they develop.
Of course, big AdSense publishers have always been able to negotiate revenue share and get access to custom ad formats and other features, and that information is still confidential.
This news definitely interested a lot of publishers. Note, however, that Google doesn’t really mention they’re not doing this out of the goodness of their heart — Italian courts were going to force the issue in Italy, so I guess they figured it was just as well to come out clean across the board.
I will let you decide if the 68% and 51% shares are high enough or not.
It is good to see that the system is transparent. The advertisers are now aware how the revenue is being split. For me the detailed adsense report is very simple and helps me to do the analysis.
I think the revenue share is okay, most other companies I know pay less. That the Adsense search product pays less is okay (It’s very difficult to have a lot of search traffic on your site)
my guess according to my click values was under these estimates, however,i think now that those shared percentages are very excellent and fair in the same time, thanks a lot.
I always wonder how Google split the absence earning. I think we should get at least 75% for our content. Thank for the info
I realize they didn’t go along willingly, but I do welcome this small crack in the wall of Google’s secrecy. In terms of revenue share I was pleasantly surprised, I would have thought the share more like 40%.
I doubt there is any other advertising network that match those shares … but then if they were secret too, how wold we know?
I always thought that Google take part of the money earned from advertisers but surprised at the amount.It’s good to know that Google take less than half of profits.
@ Dave Starr
I guess we wouldn’t know since most advertising network doesn’t disclose their information. Most of advertising companies treats those shares as confidential information, I believe.
Im staring up with google adsense in few weeks been doing my research for all sort of things, i guess the percentage google takes of your revenue if somewhat unfair also you have to look at it that it is their search engine case closed.
I think the shares are high enough. It’s a really easy and simple way to advertise so of course there’ll be a downside to it.
And if people don’t like it, they can always use something else.
What’s so unfair about what percentage Google takes? If it were like any other advertising media, they would be taking a majority of the revenue.