Google Reveals Google Adsense Ad Revenue Split: 68% For Content Publishers, 51% For Search Partners
By Anna Johnson on May 25th, 2010Google has revealed the advertising revenue split between itself and the publishers and search partners that participate in its Google Adsense program. Content publishers – website owners that display Google ads on their sites – get 68 percent of ad revenues, while search partners – websites that customize Google’s search engine for their sites, get 51 percent.
Google Adsense is a program whereby website owners can implement Google Adwords ads (i.e. advertisements sold to advertisers via the company’s Google Adwords program) on their websites. Publishers can either display the ads on standard webpages (e.g. some of the ads we run on our Internet marketing blog are from Google) or display them as part of a customized Google search engine (e.g. check out our Internet Marketing Search Engine).
According to Google’s Neal Mohan, Vice President, Google Adsense Product Management, the reason for Google giving 68 percent of the ad revenue to content partners, and 51 percent to search partners, is due to the different costs involved in providing each of these Google Adsense products.
Google’s revelation is long overdue. It’s almost outrageous that Google hid the revenue split from publishers in the first place and is arguably the reason why other industry players (e.g. other ad networks and domain parking companies) tend to keep THEIR revenue splits secret (especially domain parking companies reliant on Google Adsense for parking income).
At the same time I commend Google for being open about its Google Adsense revenue splits. It’s also refreshing to see that in both the case of Google Adsense for content and Google Adsense for search, the split favors website owners over Google itself. Moreover, I hope Google’s move will encourage other ad networks and domain parking companies to reveal their ad splits.
Google is not, however, revealing the ad revenue splits for all its Google Adsense products. It is not disclosing revenue shares for its Google AdSense for mobile applications, Google AdSense for feeds, or its Google AdSense for games products. Neal Mohan says this is because the company is still “learning about the costs associated with supporting” these products.
Understandably, Google will not reveal the ad revenue shares it individually negotiates with major online publishers either.
Still, it’s a welcome move towards greater transparency in online advertising.
If you are a member of Google’s Adsense program, you can expect to see the revenue shares for AdSense for content and AdSense for search in your AdSense interface sometime within the coming months.
Source: Neal Mohan, “The Adsense revenue share,” Inside Adsense, May 24, 2010
