More detailed reports

[surfer67]

I hope that one day Google will provide more detailed reporting similar to what we see from other ad networks. Such as, listing of all advertisers running on the site and the cpm or cpc paid for each ad.

Can anyone think of a reason as to why they don't do this?

[robzilla]

If Adsense would show you exactly who's advertising on your site and for how much, they would risk losing both the advertiser and the publisher as you could contact those advertisers directly and give them a better deal.

[surfer67]

you could contact those advertisers directly and give them a better deal

Doesn't that apply to all ad networks.

[signor_john]

I think robzilla is correct to a degree, although in practice, most publishers wouldn't be able to offer enough impressions to interest advertisers and most advertisers aren't looking to do direct deals with thousands of mom-and-pop publishers.

I can think of three reasons beyond robzilla's explanation for why Google doesn't provide lists of advertisers:

1) To deprive competitors (other ad networks, not publishers) of "competitive intelligence."

2) Because Google doesn't view itself as a rep firm, and it would rather have you focus on the AdSense concept ("give us space on your pages, and we'll send you money") than on lists of individual advertisers who are Google's advertisers, not yours.

3) Because the overhead in providing the kind of reports you're asking for wouldn't be justified by any benefits to Google (or to most publishers, for that matter). On a site of 5,000 pages about diverse editorial topics, for example, there might be thousands of keyphrases attracting even more thousands of geotargeted advertisers on any given day. Google isn't having any trouble attracting AdSense publishers with the current system, so why add costs that would just eat into profits and/or require a smaller payout to publishers?

[koan]

Because Google doesn't view itself as a rep firm

Google also takes a lower cut than CPM ad networks, possibly because there's less human intervention and less micro-managing.

It would be nice to have more info (we still have plenty with Adsense + Analytics) but yeah, considering their position in the market, they don't have much incentives to attract more aggressively publishers.