Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Truthfully, with smart pricing, what you get paid per click is never a fixed price and varies wildly from site to site based on the function of your site.
Why would Google want to unleash a barrage of whining? ("How come my site gets only A percent while my friend's site gets B percent.")
Why would Google want to invite criticism whenever the formula changed? ("You paid me C percent, but now you're saying my site is worth only D percent under the new formula?")
Finally, how would Google benefit from revealing the details of its "secret sauce"? AdSense is already the dominant text-ad network, so it's not like millions of Web publishers are going with the Yahoo or Microsoft versions of AdSense because they find their terms more attractive.
Or is it actually _meant_ to be a game? "Carve out some space for us and see what you get." They should call it AdGames, not AdSense.
You want to continue the metaphor, it's like buying a six-pack and not knowing whether five cans will contain water and one will contain Coke.
Except you aren't the buyer. You're the seller. It's Google that's buying the pig in the poke.
Or is it actually _meant_ to be a game? "Carve out some space for us and see what you get." They should call it AdGames, not AdSense.
If it's a game, it's one that pays more reliably than the lottery or a football pool. And, unlike those games, it doesn't require paying cash out of pocket: You just stick the ad code on your site and see how much Google pays you. If you're happy with the results, you leave the code in place; if you aren't, you remove it and look for a game that pays better.
Knowing the inner workings of Google's compensation formula won't put money on your table, and Google isn't going to disclose those inner workings anyway, so why worry about what you can't know? Instead, focus on the numbers that really matter: your AdSense eCPM (which shows how well AdSense performs compared to other revenue sources) and the payment that you receive fom Google at the end of the month.
My own suspicion is adsense they don't publish the figures because they don't need to - they seem to have plenty of advertisers so why give them anything extra?
I find the lack of any info to work with is annoying too. I'm working on other ways to make money from my sites. It seems quite easy to beat adsense in eCPM, and 2 of my sites have reached that point so far. I'm hoping the rest will follow by the end of the year.
There are times that it feels like it is more related to an earnings cap than a fair and honest distribution of an earnings share - and if that were the case then I could understand why the big G would not to be above board with their calculations.
we have to just trust that google gives us the correct amount. but since when has any payout between two businesses been based on trust?
it's like doing business on a handshake.
why are you defending google on this? you are supposed to be a publisher as well.
No one is defending Google here. The OP aked why not "do you think it's right". Common sense will tell you why.
what possible benefit are you getting from being kept in the dark? you talk of "google formulas" like they are supposed to be secret.
Why not ?
I respect the fact that they have to keep certain things secret. I may not like it, but I respect it.
If you made some "winning formula" no matter what medium it is in, wouldn't you want to protect your work to prevent people copying it (or trying to defraud you)... I sure would.
Just think of the money people would save if they made their own Coke, KFC, or Whitecastle Burgers ?
Companies would collapse, people would be out of a job, rioting in the streets, and Bruce Willis will make another film about saving the world.
Okay, I made the last one up, but surely you can see why companies have to protect sensitive data.
When brought to task, G points to the user experience more often than not.
Good, bad or indifferent, I can not think of another business that operates this way, i.e. with so much of its "services" cloaked so completely.
Still, I like cashing the check.
Why would Google want to unleash a barrage of whining?
Whining about GG can get worse?
Except you aren't the buyer. You're the seller.
Knowing the inner workings of Google's compensation formula won't put money on your table, and Google isn't going to disclose those inner workings anyway, so why worry about what you can't know?
How will Google _lose_ by telling me what they're giving me?
I'm giving inches of space and I want to know exactly what I'm getting in return.
It's just like an auction house. Your vase may be worth $1000 and may get that for it, but it all depends on the day. It may go for more. It may well go for half that value. Google is no different.
a) Am I happy with what I am receiving? If not;
b) Can I do better elsewhere? If not;
c) Shoot self in foot in a fit of petulance by removing AdSense.
If Mr. Adsense gets $100 for a click on my site and passes along 50c to me, all I know is I received 50c for that click, either I'm happy or I'm not.
Knowing otherwise isn't going to increase my 50c take and;
Knowing otherwise isn't going to instantly produce a better competitor to AdSense I can use.
Them's the facts of life folks - whether we like it or not.
why are you defending google on this? you are supposed to be a publisher as well.
As Lame_Wolf said, no one is "defending Google." My response, put simply, was to ask how Google would benefit from changing the status quo. Unless there's something in it for Google, don't hold your breath waiting for a change--and don't carry a gun if you have a propensity for self-inflicted foot injuries of the kind described by IanCP. :-)
If Mr. Adsense gets $100 for a click on my site and passes along 50c to me, all I know is I received 50c for that click, either I'm happy or I'm not.Knowing otherwise isn't going to increase my 50c take and;
it probably would increase your take in the long run.
if google pays us 50% today, and their profits take a tumble because of the recession or whatever, as it stands at the moment they could quite easily reduce our share for a few months to make up the shortfall.
google are a company like any other, in it to make money. so we can assume they do that because it makes sense.
but if they told us how much we were getting prior to the tumble, then they are far less likely to publish a cut because we'd all know about it. that's why this secrecy thing is so no good for us. our cut doesn't stay stable.
adsense earnings are prone to quite strong swings sometimes. if they published our cut then i'm guessing the swings would iron out a little bit.
f google pays us 50% today, and their profits take a tumble because of the recession or whatever, as it stands at the moment they could quite easily reduce our share for a few months to make up the shortfall.
Not without revealing that fact in their quarterly earnings report.
Look, I'm all for "transparency." As far as I'm concerned, Google could offer a browser toolbar that would show:
- The individual publisher's cut
- The individual publisher's "smart pricing" discount
- How many advertisers had opted out of the publisher's domain
- How many advertisers had opted into the publisher's domain
That way, publishers would know how much they and their competitors are valued by Google and its advertisers, and advertisers would know how much publishers were valued by Google and other advertisers.
But that's all beside the point, because the real question here isn't how publishers might or might not benefit from "transparency": The real question is why Google would want to change a policy (keeping the "secret sauce" secret) that has been in place for 6+ years and hasn't kept AdSense from becoming the dominant contextual ad network. Unless you can offer Google a compelling reason to change its policy, your argument boils down to "I want," and that's unlikely to be an effective negotiating strategy.
Will never happen.
Does it really matter? Slice it, dice it if you're gunna fizzgig around. AdSense has IMHO, a set payment formula.
FWIW
Big Player 90/10
Not so Big Player 80/20
Up among the big time 70/30
down to:
OK down to "you got an AdSense account" 40/60
Now if you are alert, looking at those numbers, one thing should stand out.
COST
Yes. [Putting Cost Accountants hat on] each an every delivey of an Ad costs a basic $0.0X
Yes Marcia, fools would say "how can it cost to deliver Ad's". Well forget servers etc. Count in 1,000's of staff behind the scenes.
Whether you deliver 1 million impressions an hour or that number over a whole year, that unit cost remains constant, for eack and every impression. It must be included in the "take out" by AdSense.
I could Yadda on for hours but essentially my experience of AdSense [from their POV] is positive.
I honestly believe the biggest take out is X amount per unit impression and then added in a variable per your traffic/impressions/clicks.
Go back to my half-baked table above.
Again FWIW
