After years of keeping mum on the Adsense revenue share, Google finally broke its silence and announced via an official blog post how much advertising money it shares to publishers.
On the Inside Adsense blog, Google disclosed that:
- For Adsense for Content (the usual contextual ads you see on most blogs), the revenue share of webmasters is 68%. This means for every $100 that advertisers pay to Google, $68 goes to the publisher while Google retains the remaining $32.
- For Adsense for Search (ads appearing on Google search results posted on one’s site), the revenue split is 51%-49%, slightly in favor of publishers. This means publishers get $51 for every $100 advertisers pay on Adsense for Search.
What does this mean to us bloggers and site publishers?
For one, it’s a welcome disclosure from Google. Now, we have an idea how much exactly we get and how much Google gets from every advertising money.
Two, this gives us an idea how much we can charge our own advertisers. Let’s say a banner ad unit on your blog earns you $50 a month from Adsense. Based on the Adsense revenue share, a Google Adwords advertiser targeting that banner ad actually pays Google $73.53. Your share in that is $50 (68%), while Google keeps $23.53 (32%).
Now, if a direct advertiser wants to get that banner ad exclusively, you can say that it costs $73.53 — not $50 — to target the ad. You can better negotiate and leverage with potential advertisers since you have the figures.
Finally, as Google also explained in its blog post, choosing the ad network you want to participate in should not just be about the revenue share. More importantly, it should be about the nominal income. Another ad network may offer you 80% revenue share but if their cost to advertisers is lower than Google’s, you might still earn more from Adsense given only a 68% share.
Google explains:
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.
Google’s correct: it should always be about the nominal income. Unfortunately, this disclosure of revenue split does not change our current situation: cost per click is dropping, hence, Adsense income is also dropping.
Are you also experiencing the same thing?
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