How Much Google Cuts as Revenue Sharing in AdSense?

Google AdSense is one of the reliable Pay-Per-Click (PPC) program which display ads on publisher’s websites and pay when a visitor to that site click on any advertisements. Google collect money from the advertisers through AdWords program and display ads on publisher’s site.Google displays their ads on site content, search results, games and videos. When someone clicks on an ad, Google pays a portion of advertiser’s money to that publisher and makes profit by keeping the remaining money. This is referred as revenue sharing and on top this many other sites offers further revenue sharing based on their own popularity.

Below is the formal definition of revenue sharing by Google:

Each AdSense publisher receives a percentage of the revenue recognized by Google in connection with the display of ads on their site. This percentage is referred to as the revenue share, and is displayed within your AdSense account.

For long time it was not known how much is the percentage of commission Google pays to the publishers. Finally Google disclosed the AdSense revenue it shares with the publishers for Content ads and Search ads. It did not disclose the revenue sharing percentage for other ads for games and videos.

AdSense Revenue Sharing Sites

Besides the revenue sharing by Google there are AdSense revenue sharing sites offer free website creation tools along with AdSense integration. These are the best platform for beginners without AdSense account. Though they deduct some portion of your AdSense revenue (in addition to the revenue deducted by Google as indicated above), they will help you to optimize your site ranking in the search engines and bring more traffic to your sites.

When you add Google AdSense widget to your website, it will prompt you to apply for AdSense. Google will review your site and approve or disapprove the application. You can also use your existing AdSense id when using Google AdSense element, which does not make sense since you need to share your revenue.

If you have already AdSense approved account, you can also place your Ad codes by selecting HTML widget, in this way you can earn the full revenue  of your AdSense account without sharing revenue.

Below is the representation of AdSense revenue sharing mechanism for Content and Search ads assuming an advertiser pays a dollar per click.

There are another kind of sites offering publishers to publish articles and display their AdSense ads. These type of sites do not offer an option for creating a new AdSense account and publishers with existing AdSense account only can get benefited out of these sites.

How to Check the Revenue Sharing Percentage?

In order to check the revenue sharing percentage by Google, login to your AdSense account navigate to “Account > Account Information” option available under the “Settings” tab.

Check besides the “Active products” under “Account information” details. The revenue sharing percentage of Google for each product type active in that account will be shown in details.

In order to check the third party revenue sharing percentage, go to “Access and Authorization > Third party access” section available under the “Settings” tab. Here you can see the percentage of revenue sharing deducted for the hosted content like Blogger and YouTube along with the third parties if you have provided access.

All AdSense revenue sharing sites like Weebly, HubPages, Blogger and YouTube for which you provided access for revenue sharing will be shown along with percentage of revenue sharing of each ad type in detail. You have an option to enable or disable any particular third party at any point of time.

Is Google’s Revenue Share is Better?

This question can be answered only if you have used multiple ad networks along with AdSense. But Google says they offer better revenue since the competition among the advertisers is high, as a result publishers will get benefited. Here is what the calculation from Google to show AdSense offers better revenue for publishers than other ad networks:

We believe our revenue share is extremely competitive. However, revenue shares alone can be misleading, so we encourage you to focus on the total revenue generated for your site. For example, if Google’s auction of ad inventory on your site generates $100, with our 68% revenue share you’d receive $68 through AdSense. Another ad network might offer an 80% revenue share, but only collect $50 from advertisers, so you’d receive $40.