Google finally revealed this morning just how much it takes as its share when advertisers buy ads on content and search inside AdSense. According to a release this morning on the AdSense blog, all publishers pocket 68% revenue for content ads and 51% for search ads, except for high profile publishers which negotiate their own shares. Google says they are revealing these numbers “in the spirit of greater transparency,” but what is the real motivation behind their decision?
According to Search Engine Land writer Barry Schwartz, the transparency could be an effort to placate Italian anti-trust complaints which argued for revealing the revenue shares. Journalist, author and Google expert Jeff Jarvis made no mention of the Italian pressures in a blog post this morning, but did mention that he too had pressed the company to publish their ad splits earlier this year.
Google says its cut for content and search ads goes toward the “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.” These costs are yet to be solidified for their other AdSense offerings, such as mobile applications, feeds, games and YouTube ads, and thus these splits were not revealed today.
