low-volume publishers are ....... where most of the click fraud comes from?

Source for the above?

so of course we get paid a much smaller percentage than adsense partners get.

Source for the above?

>>>Source for the above?<<<

ummm, o.k. ken_b, we'll put you on record as believing that the majority of google click fraud is done by google partners like the miami herald, nytimes, hgtv, lycos, etc.

considering the size of the enron scandal, i guess that anything is possible :-)

[edit]Because it's not worth the effort.[/edit]

>>>Can anyone direct me to what google is including in TAC?<<<

"The majority of TAC is related to payments to our AdSense partners. Toolbar distribution deals are typically accounted for as TAC if they are revenue-sharing in nature." -George Reyes, SVP CFO, Google Inc. Q2 2006 Earnings Conference Call Transcript (GOOG)

wrt the latest toolbar deal with dell: "Financial details were not disclosed, but Schmidt said the companies will share revenue from search-advertising fees."

wrt the latest toolbar deal with adobe: "The first product to be bundled with Google Toolbar will be Adobe's digital media player, Macromedia Shockwave Player. It will be offered as part of the Shockwave installation process for Internet Explorer on Windows... Under the terms of the agreement, the Google Toolbar will also be offered as part of other Adobe product installations in the future."

google toolbar deals go back to at least 2004, when realnetworks offered it with the realplayer 10 download... you can get it with firefox, and last year it was offered with the java runtime download from sun.

so contrary to what was written in that horrible nytimes article, and what's been posted out here in the past, TAC IS NOT PUBLISHER PAYOUT.

>>>As in other recent quarters, the "traffic acquisition costs" payout to AdSense partner sites<<<

that is not correct, efv, as george reyes just told you... only "the majority" of TAC goes to adsense partners, not all of it!

As Reyes also said, toolbar deals have gone back to 2004, and--as the numbers show--the revenue share paid to Google partners has been remarkably consistent from one quarter to the next.

One can quibble about who's getting how much, but the bottom line is that anyone who's about to cry "Google is cutting the payout" might want to take a look at the latest quarterly earnings report before making a statement that is so easily contradicted by the available evidence.

As we noted in a previous quarter report the traffic costs include a variety of expenses within them...one which is the pay out to publishers. So although I agree with EFV that the traffic costs have remained constant since the beginning of the program (about 77-78%) the extrapolation of this to publisher's payouts remaining constant is not necessarily true. Publisher's payout is only one of many factors included in the cost of traffic. With the amount of rapid expansion of staff and equipment, combined wioth a shift towards seach results being a higher revenue contribution it would not surprise me if the publisher's payout has been affected. By 15 or 10% cannot be determined without the complete financial breakdowns.

ublisher's payout is only one of many factors included in the cost of traffic. With the amount of rapid expansion of staff and equipment, combined wioth a shift towards seach results being a higher revenue contribution it would not surprise me if the publisher's payout has been affected.

Again, Google defines Traffic Acquisition Costs as "the portion of revenues shared with Google's partners." Staff, equipment, and other in-house costs wouldn't within that description.

Know for sure in previous detailed reports many beta programs and hardware costs were allocated to the traffic costs. Haven't seen a recent statement to see if this is still the case.

<corrected post>

[edited by: Visi at 1:50 am (utc) on July 24, 2006]

Not if we're to believe the 2Q 2006 Financial Release from Google Investor Relations.

Yep....was just re reading that. Think I will go looking for a more detailed report on the allocations. Be interested now to see what is actually included in that summary:) Went back and looked at 2005 financials and in there states TAC is what is paid to partners. Includes some straight line allocations but in general is amount being paid out.

[edited by: Visi at 2:14 am (utc) on July 24, 2006]

With regards to G paying around 78 cents on the dollar, that is B.S.

I ran some keyword marking on keywords that were paying on average $21-$30 per click and I only made about .30 cents per click.

There is no way they pay that much.

Unless maybe you set a pattern of traffic and stats and clicks for them and then they gradually start paying you more of the share.

What are your thoughts?

My thoughts are that you have no clue how the content network works on AdWords.

>>>anyone who's about to cry "Google is cutting the payout" might want to take a look at the latest quarterly earnings report before making a statement that is so easily contradicted by the available evidence.<<<

1) we don't know the overall publisher earnings, or the overall partner earnings
2) we don't know how many publishers or partners are involved
3) we DO know that only part of the TAC is paid out to publishers and partners, per George Reyes from Google.

the main point to take home is that TAC IS NOT PUBLISHER PAYOUT, despite what some people on this forum want you to believe :-)

beyond that:
4) we DO know that content adwords prices have dropped like a rock since the split between search and content back in november
5) we DO know that many advertisers have left content for search
6) because the content ad prices have dropped so much, and there is far less advertiser competition, we DO know that the average publisher EPC has dropped significantly

>>>I ran some keyword marking on keywords that were paying on average $21-$30 per click<<<

industry wide, average keyword prices for advertising dropped last quarter... typically well under $2.00 for most keywords? not sure who's paying that much for the keywords you saw, but yeah, google epc's of $.01-$.03 are indeed pretty lousy.

overall, i suspect that google has some of the cheapest keywords in the biz, which is reflected in the low epc we get from them... even after all the cuts, ypn epc is still over twice what google epc is.

The average epc for an Adsense publisher is how much?

4) we DO know that content adwords prices have dropped like a rock since the split between search and content back in november
5) we DO know that many advertisers have left content for search
6) because the content ad prices have dropped so much, and there is far less advertiser competition, we DO know that the average publisher EPC has dropped significantly

No. You think you know. If you are correct, you'd have to explain the many sites that have higher EPC's.

EFV doesn't know for sure what percentages get paid out...yada yada, and you equally don't know what you wrote about.

it's real simple:
1) content ad prices dropped way down since november
2) average publisher epc MUST follow that downward trend

there is no evidence or logic to support any other conclusion.

>>>With regards to G paying around 78 cents on the dollar<<<

remember, TAC IS NOT PUBLISHER PAYOUT.

1) content ad prices dropped way down since november

But how do you know that? Or is it based just on personal experience? If it's based on personal experience, how can you be sure that it's true across all subjects and sites?

>>>If you are correct, you'd have to explain the many sites that have higher EPC's.<<<

keyword prices in some sectors are worth more than keyword prices in other sectors... so it's logical that publishers in some sectors would have higher epc's.

mediapost and fathom online regularly publish keyword prices, you can check it for yourself.

if your contention is that some of those higher epc's have also increased since november, note that: "a recent Google decision to incorporate qualitative factors--including an assessment of landing pages--into pricing, make it impossible to accurately judge that company's average (keyword)prices." -Peter Hershberg, a managing partner at search engine marketing firm Reprise Media, 2/06

>>>But how do you know that?<<<

how do i know that google content(vs. search) keyword prices have dropped since the november split? tell ya what... if you have information to the contrary, please post it.

how do i know that google content(vs. search) keyword prices have dropped since the november split? tell ya what... if you have information to the contrary, please post it.

I could claim that George Bush is an alien from Pluto, but I'd just be wasting bandwidth and making myself look foolish if I didn't supply evidence.

>>>I could claim that George Bush is an alien from Pluto, but I'd just be wasting bandwidth and making myself look foolish if I didn't supply evidence.<<<

most of us understand that fewer advertisers on the content side since the split = lower cpc, because of less competition <insert rolling eyeballs here>

Yah on the content side I would imagine CPC dropped a lot, on the other hand, Google's price gouging on the search side probably eclipsed what was taken away from the content side.

most of us understand that fewer advertisers on the content side since the split = lower cpc, because of less competition <insert rolling eyeballs here>

But you haven't provided evidence that there are fewer advertisers on the content side since the split between search and content bidding. (Google's quarterly earnings reports suggest otherwise, and if we're going to guess, those reports are the best--indeed, the only--supporting evidence we've got.)

Fact is, you made a claim, and you weren't willing to support it with proof. Instead, you dodged hunderdown's question by implying that it was hunderdown's responsibility to disprove your claim. Sorry, pal, but that's no way to win an argument. :-)

danimal, as it happens, I do have evidence to the contrary. It's only my personal experience, though. (For what it's worth, my EPC is 12% higher for July than it was for November, so it's gone up, not down.)

You seemed to be making a wider claim, which you could support if you had access to inside information.

So what's your evidence? I really want to know.

>>>But you haven't provided evidence that there are fewer advertisers on the content side since the split between search and content bidding. (Google's quarterly earnings reports suggest otherwise<<<

first you keep telling us that TAC is publisher payout(wrong), now you are claiming that the annual report gives a count of how many google advertisers there are? i can't wait to hear what's next!

>>>EPC is 12% higher for July than it was for November, so it's gone up, not down.<<<

on the average, my epc has been down slightly all year, compared to the two-month period ending on 11/15/05... the split happened on ~11/21/05? july epc has not suffered too much so far, probably because i have never gotten too many mfa's or site-targeted ads.

it's also relevant to note that my sites cover a niche market in the biggest worldwide ad sector there is.

ignoring adwords forum postings for the moment :-) the adwords cpc numbers that i have been tracking belong to a couple of friends of mine who finally bailed out of the content side in favor of search earlier this year, for all the obvious reasons:

"Because contextually targeted ads on our content network sometimes return lower conversion numbers than ads on Google.com search results pages... Google's smart pricing technology automatically lowers the cost of content clicks based on the referring site" [google.com...]

danimal, thanks. That's not really enough evidence to conclude that content EPC is way down since November, in my opinion, but now I understand where you are coming from.

Well, since we seem to be able to extrapolate a sample size of one out to an entire market, I would have to say that EPC on the content side has been climbing all year and it is dropping way off on the search side.

In February my EPC for content was 1/3 what it was in June. On the site search end, the EPC has dropped about 20% and the CTR has dropped about 50%

That is proof positive that the advertisers are leaving the search market and moving to content in droves!

Just don't tell my Research Methodologies Professor what I just wrote, he would be sure to find a way to go in and change my transcript for such a sin!

now you are claiming that the annual report gives a count of how many google advertisers there are?

No, I'm simply pointing out that, according to Google Investor Relations, 2Q 2006 AdSense revenues were up 7% over the previous quarter and 58% over 2Q 2005. Those numbers don't give much credence to your claim of "fewer advertisers on the content side" since separate bidding was introduced for the search and content networks.