What percentage is Google taking from adwords?

[Seb7]

One of my new adword compaigns went a little mad, had lots of impressions with 12% click through rate only to descover it was displaying ads on the website it was advertising.

After blocking ads on that site, adword impressions went back to its normal small rate.

The thing to note is that the website had spent 4 times more than it earned in adsense on that day. So I can only presume that its normal for Google to take 75% cut ?

(spare me the adwords for adsense comments as the ads are not for the adsense)

[purplecape]

So I can only presume that its normal for Google to take 75% cut ?

No. The best analyses of Google's earnings I've seen suggest that the publisher receives 60 to 70%. Of course, that's an average.

I wouldn't extrapolate from an unusual circumstance such as the one you describe, though.

[farmboy]

Are you sure the only AdSense ads clicked on that day were the ads for the website in question? In other words, if not for those wrong ads appearing on the site you wouldn't have earned a penny from AdSense on that day?

FarmBoy

[Edge]

The thing to note is that the website had spent 4 times more than it earned in adsense on that day. So I can only presume that its normal for Google to take 75% cut ?

If you tracked the clicks accurately on both Adsense and Adwords then yes your math is right.

[edited by: Edge at 3:31 pm (utc) on Jan. 3, 2009]

[zett]

Nobody knows what Google's share is - well, Google knows, that much is clear, and there is a good reason why they don't tell us.

There is (technically) the possibility that Google takes 75%. They may need this to subsidize "sweetheart deals" that get a 100% share or even more. I remember that being discussed (controversially) here in the past.

Of course, someone may jump in and point to the quarterly earnings reports that seem to indicate a revenue share of 70% for the publisher (exact number has escaped me now). This may be so, but it should be added that this figure is valid ONLY as "across the board" value and absolutely meaningless for the individual publisher.

I wouldn't be surprised if your findings were true.

[Seb7]

farmboy, I am estimating, as there were approx 2% of the ads appearing on the other sites.

I just assumed Google would only be taking around 5%, Google are obviously taking a huge cut. All those thousands of hard working websters trying to make a few cents, and most of their earnings going to Google :-(

[edited by: Seb7 at 5:28 pm (utc) on Jan. 3, 2009]

[coachm]

Ooops. Brain broken. Just ignore.

[purplecape]

As I said before I don't think you should extrapolate from this one instance.

A different approach would be to look at this the other way around. How much, really, could the advertisers appearing on your site pay and still turn a profit? Yes, there will be times when they might overbid, but over the long run things are going to average out. Maybe your experience is different, but based on what I see on MY site, and the average click value for my site, it just wouldn't make sense that Google is keeping even as much as 50% of what those advertisers are paying....

And it could easily be less than that.

Also, if Google were keeping a "huge cut" we would see a LOT more threads here about success with direct advertising as an alternative to AdSense. We see a few, but not all that many.

So I just don't buy the idea that Google is keeping a large chunk of the payments made by advertisers--on average.