The most interesting thing in the above article for me:

Our systems diligently work around-the-clock to collect this data from our many ad servers and tally it all up for each publisher, generally updating the reports with recent stats every 15 to 30 minutes.

Now we finally know, from the horse's mouth, how "real-time" the Adsense stats really are!

Now we finally know, from the horse's mouth, how "real-time" the Adsense stats really are!

However we also know from AWA that AdWords stats are about 2 hours behind therefore it must reasonable to assume AdSense is the same?

Now we finally know, from the horse's mouth, how "real-time" the Adsense stats really are!

No we don't. We already knew how often they updated the stats, and "generally updating the reports with recent stats" doesn't necessarily mean that you get all the clicks from the recent time period immediately counted, nor does recent mean that "recent" means from the last 15 to 30 minutes.

Back when ad loggers worked well, you could see the great variability in how fast clicks were reported. Some showed up almost instantly, others took hours, and others disappeared into future click dumps.