Google Reveals AdSense Revenue Share

Filed in archive Did you know on June 19, 2010

If you are Using Google Adsense to monetize your blog you already know that you...don't know how much money does Google keep for itself from AdSense ads. Unless you're a big publisher, Google will not tell you. Although they "preach" data liberation.
Google has kept its AdSense revenue share numbers a secret for quite some time, but thanks to an anti-trust investigation in Italy has now decided to disclose them - or at least some of them.

It's simple. Google brokers ads for web sites, keeping some of what an advertiser will spend for itself. Imagine that an advertiser agrees to pay $1 per click for an ad distributed through Google's AdSense network. Google might pay publishers carrying that ad 90% of the amount - or 75% - or 50% - or whatever it decides. Publishers themselves aren't told how much is kept.

Until now most publishers didn't know. AdSense was largely a black box for publishers. They agreed to carry ads from Google. Those ads generated revenue. Google deducts a cut and gives the rest to the publisher, but the percentage deducted wasn't disclosed. The exception was for large publishers who negotiate deals to carry AdSense ads.

Google said this is an effort to increase transparency (but the situation in Italy likely played a significant role), and is now displaying the revenue shares right in the new AdSense interface, in the 'Account Information' section of the 'Account Settings' page (the numbers will also be available soon in the existing interface).

"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."