I don't understand your percentages, this is what I read

32%

Google's partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $997 million

TAC - Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenues shared with Google's partners, increased to $785 million

That is where the percentage comes from.

tis still 32% not 78% ,,,,,

am i being ,,,,, thick

On the conference call they said that the recent changes to the Adwords quality algo was "incremental", look out for the next increment! Hosing advertisers out of the game is an ongoing agenda, they know PPC is is junk biz model due too fraud so these "increments" are designed to kill PPC and replace with PPA. They will own you.

If you let them. ;)

[edited by: TypicalSurfer at 12:24 am (utc) on July 21, 2006]

I don't understand your percentages

Divide the "traffic acquisition costs" (the amount paid to partner sites) by total partner revenes, and you get the payout percentage.

Hosing advertisers out of the game is an ongoing agenda, they know PPC is is junk biz model due too fraud so these "increments" are designed to kill PPC and replace with PPA. They will own you.

Yeah, right, they're going to throw away billions of dollars in PPC revenues so they can emulate Commission Junction. Ain't gonna happen. But that's a topic for another thread.

For the people such as you and I, it is certainly less, because we do know that Google has stuck deals in the past whereby they give 100%, Yahoo for example. There must be other such deals, which would obviously increase the average, but not for you nor I.

Google-owned sites generated revenues of $1.43 billion

Google's partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $997 million

Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenues shared with Google's partners, increased to $785 million

1.43 billion + 997 million = 2.427 billion

Of which $785 million is 32%, but it is 78% of the revenue earned through partner sites.

For the people such as you and I, it is certainly less, because we do know that Google has stuck deals in the past whereby they give 100%, Yahoo for example. There must be other such deals, which would obviously increase the average, but not for you nor I.

In my original post, I clearly stated: "No one is claiming that 78.7362 percent is the percentage paid to every individual publisher."

This thread is titled "2Q 2006 earnings and payout percentage," so the issue isn't who gets what; it's whether the payout percentage to publishers as a group changed in the last quarter. And, in fact, that payout percentage has not changed significantly--although it did go up slightly in the publishers' favor. (Payout was 77.9 percent in Q1 and was just over 78.7 percent in Q2, for an increase of 1 percent.)

Side note to the earnings report: Reuters quotes Dr. Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, as saying: "You are going to see more and more international focus, international expansion, international growth." That's good news for publishers who have audiences outside the U.S.

And, EFV, the opposite side of that coin is that they don't see big opportunities for growth in the US market. Not that it's necessarily saturated, of course.

Re: international traffic.

It's also important to remind that maybe (maybe, one day or another, perhaps, who knows...) YPN will also go international.

It is important for Adsense to consolidate even more its position in international markets before YPN comes in.

Revenues from outside of the United States contributed
42% of total revenues

It would be interesting to have more info on the international situation (the same percentage for Google-owned sites, for adsense sites etc.)

I guess that - due to less competition - they are able to keep a much larger share of international adwords revenues...

I guess that - due to less competition - they are able to keep a much larger share of international adwords revenues...

Interestingly, insofar as I can analyse, my EPC from my international traffic is higher than that of US visitors.

Fewer page impressions, higher CTR therefore obviously higher eCPM.

Certainly my European advertisers pay considerably more than west coast USA with my own AdWords costs for Middle East and Europe definitely higher than my US AdWords.

Revenue for the period totaled $2.46 billion

Google's revenue fell to $1.67 billion after subtracting commissions paid to its partners in the Internet's largest advertising network.

Would you just divide 1.67 by 2.46? That would mean Google's share is 67.9% and our share is 32.1%

I don't see any other way to do the math.

You're assuming that all of Google's revenues come from AdSense.

Adwords revenues are generated by:
- Google's site (ads on the Google SERPS)
- The Adsense network (ads on our sites)

You should only consider the Adsense network when calculating "our" share

Exactly. The $2.46 billion is BOTH search and content. The money paid out is only content. You have to separate out search and content. WE are content.

I'll echo what frox and hunderdown said.

The point of doing the math is to see what the overall publisher payout percentage is. You won't get that number unless you divide TAC (traffic acquisition costs) by partner revenues.

Interestingly, insofar as I can analyze, my EPC from my international traffic is higher than that of US visitors.

I see the same thing. I'm following up on this by building sites geared to international traffic.

The point of doing the math is to see what the overall publisher payout percentage is. You won't get that number unless you divide TAC (traffic acquisition costs) by partner revenues.

I'm not all sure of what google includes in traffic acquisition costs, and whether it includes OTHER costs besides money paid out to content publishers.

So, if we don't know that, then these discussion based on minimal data are a waste of time, and just bring bad conclusions.

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

Google defines Traffic Acquisition Costs as "the portion of revenues shared with Google's partners."

That's a pretty good definition of "payout percentage."

>>>That's a pretty good definition of "payout percentage."<<<

no, it's not, because we are not partners, we are publishers.

partners sometimes get to keep 100% of their adsense revenue, and partners, unlike publishers, sometimes get paid just for sending search traffic to google.

since google does not tell us how the content revenue is split between publishers and partners, it is impossible to determine the average publisher payout.

Google defines Traffic Acquisition Costs as "the portion of revenues shared with Google's partners."

That's a pretty good definition of "payout percentage."

Not to me, which is why I asked. I can't figure out why they say SHARED rather than PAID.

Shared usually means something that is split up between parties, while paid is something given from one to another.

It kinda makes a difference here.

In any event the whole application is bogus in this thread since we don't know that there are large volume partners who are getting 100% and most other content publishers getting 50%. Or any other combination.

"Shared," to me, values our contribution more highly than if we were "paid."

I get paid commissions by Amazon. Google shares the revenues generated by ads on my web site.

Just semantics? Maybe. But even the worst month I've had with AdSense since I joined was equal to the best month with affiliate programs.

no, it's not, because we are not partners, we are publishers.

Well, they never mention any kind of payment to or revenue sharing with "publishers," so according to your logic, publishers aren't paid any revenue share at all.

Since we know that we do get paid, and since Google's financial writers used the generic term "partners" rather than the specific term "Premium Partners," we can safely assume that they were referring to every individual and company that's included in the "content network."

Again, the bottom line is that more than 78.7 percent of AdSense network revenues was paid to partners, publishers, or whatever term you'd like to use. This is slightly more than the 1Q 2006 payout and roughly the same as in other recent quarters. And it refutes the oft-heard complaint from our more imaginative or paranoid forum members that "Google is cutting the payout and keeping more money for itself." (If Google were keeping more money for itself, we'd be able to see that in the quarterly earnings report.)

78.7% seems very generous to me.

>>>Well, they never mention any kind of payment to or revenue sharing with "publishers," so according to your logic, publishers aren't paid any revenue share at all.<<<

well, if that's true, then according to your logic, efv, there is no such thing as "publishers", which is obviously wrong :-)

"Publisher: A participant in the AdSense program, who is running a website with ad code on one or more of their web pages."

[google.com...]

bonus question for efv: why isn't the term "partner" listed in the adsense help center glossary, but they do use it in the earnings report?

>>>But even the worst month I've had with AdSense since I joined was equal to the best month with affiliate programs.<<<

same here... but we all know of people who have made far more with affiliates than they ever did with adsense.

>>>78.7% seems very generous to me.<<<

what if you the publisher are only getting 30% of that 78.7% total payout, and the partners are getting 70% of it? does that seem fair or generous to you?

we already know that some partners get to keep 100% of their adsense revenue... when have you ever heard of a publisher getting to keep 100% of their adense revenue? it's the partners who are making the big bucks with adsense, not the publishers.

ask yourself why google refuses to tell us what the earnings split is between partners and publishers.

Danimal, I said at the beginning of this thread:

"No one is claiming that 78.7362 percent is the percentage paid to every individual publisher; your revenue share could be less (or, at least in theory, more), since Google doesn't reveal payout percentages by account."

I'm glad that we're in agreement on that point. Thanks for your support. :-)

>>>And, in fact, that payout percentage has not changed significantly--although it did go up slightly in the publishers' favor.<<<

no, efv, what you did was incorrectly lump everyone together as "publishers", despite the fact that google called us partners in the report... adsense has both publishers AND partners.

do you not understand that us low-volume publishers are the dregs of adsense, because that's where most of the click fraud comes from? so of course we get paid a much smaller percentage than adsense partners get.

>>>If Google were keeping more money for itself, we'd be able to see that in the quarterly earnings report<<<

as rbacal just told you, that is impossible, because google does not tell us who earned what... or even how many publishers/partners the report is based on.