Typically, every time Google releases earnings, there is a thread about how much share Google is giving to their AdSense publishers. You can often some what get an idea of that share by looking at Google's financial statements.
Google released earnings yesterday. Greg Sterling's Search, Ads And Apps: The Google Q3 2007 Results has nice coverage of it, and I am sure Tamar will post the forum recap later, plus there is more roundups at Techmeme, if you are interested. From those earnings, in the Q3 highlights it says:
Google Network Revenues - Google's partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $1.45 billion, or 34% of total revenues, in the third quarter of 2007. This represents a 40% increase over network revenues of $1.04 billion generated in the third quarter of 2006 and an 8% increase over second quarter 2007 revenues of $1.35 billion.The majority of TAC expense is related to amounts ultimately paid to our AdSense partners, which totaled $1.12 billion in the third quarter of 2007. TAC is also related to amounts ultimately paid to certain distribution partners and others who direct traffic to our website, which totaled $105 million in the third quarter of 2007.
From that, we can somewhat figure that Google has shared 77% of the earnings from the content network with their publishers. So Google's AdSense network brought in 34% of Google's revenue and Google gave away 77% of that to their publishers. Yes, it is that important to keep those who feed you happy.
Some forum members don't believe it is as high as 77%. Some feel it is closer to under 50%.
And just a note on payout that was leaked from FEDERATED MEDIA (conference call) earlier this year and no one in this forum showed an interest in was that Google was taking a MINIMUM of 44% from small publishers. They discovered this through their own hard fought efforts to negotiate a higher payout from GOOG.
Forum discussion WebmasterWorld.
