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  • Online Newspapers Attract More Than Half Of Internet Audience

    Online Newspapers Attract More Than Half Of Internet Audience

    More than 123 million Americans visited newspaper websites in May, representing 57 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience, according to a new report from comScore.

    The New York Times Brand led the category with more than 32 million visitors and 719 million pageviews during the month. The average visitor viewed 22 pages of content on the New York Times.  Tribune Newspapers ranked second in terms of audience with 24.8 million visitors, followed by Advance Internet (18.1 million visitors) and USA Today (16.8 million visitors).

    Top-Newspapers

    "The good news for publishers is that even as print circulation declines, Americans are actually consuming as much news as ever – it’s just being consumed across more media," said Jeff Hackett, comScore senior vice president.

    "The Internet has become an essential channel in the way the majority of Americans consume news content today with nearly 3 out of 5 Internet users reading newspapers online each month. As news evolves towards a more digital model, the issue is not attracting the eyeballs, but rather demonstrating the true value of those eyeballs to advertisers. As advertising rates for digital move closer into line with those of traditional media, the economics of the news business should begin to look a lot more promising."

    comScore’s Ad Metrix service found among the top site categories where display ads appeared in April, online newspapers accounted for 2.4 percent of impressions but a higher 6.7 percent of display advertising dollars. The average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) on online newspaper sites was $7, higher than each of the other top site categories and nearly three times the average CPM for the total U.S. Internet at $2.52.

    "Online newspapers represent premium inventory for advertisers," added Hackett. "comScore research conducted last year for the Online Publishers Association showed that visitors who are exposed to display ads on news sites are more likely than average to visit the advertiser website, are heavier online buyers and tend to have higher household income."

    "Online news publishers are also leading the way in the use of newer display ad formats, which are aiming to create a richer, more engaging experience for consumers."
     

     

  • How The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is Marketed Online

    Online ad firm Unicast reached out to us to talk about how it is helping the makers of The Twilight Saga engage the series’ fanbase online "where others have failed", and how the film industry is increasingly looking to online ad platforms to drive sales.

    "With $710 million box revenue for The Twilight Saga: New Moon, it’s no surprise the film’s distributors are looking to go bigger in its marketing efforts and ensure they promote to its loyal fanbase to score a similar or bigger theatrical climactic success around the July 4th weekend," a representative for Unicast tells WebProNews. "Online marketing continues to grow in this sector year over year, with up to 20% of ad budgets being spent in this space."

    Twilight Eclipse ad from UnicastShe says with New Moon’s (the second film in the series) rich media online campaigns, they successfully leveraged geotargeting and Movie Finder formats to allow users to buy theater tickets locally, post showtime information to social networks, download an iPhone app and view trailers. 

    Working in partnership with Unicast again, four rich media campaigns for Eclipse (the third installment, opening later this month) have been developed as homepage roadblocks on MySpace to target core audiences. The campaign for this film allows fans to once again use Movie Finder/Geotargeting to book local tickets, to post to social media networks, and to view trailers, but has also extended its interactive ad units to allow audiences to track fellow fan buzz via social media, organize viewing parties with other fans, and buy the soundtrack.

    MySpace obviously plays a huge role in the marketing of this film, but fans are engaging via Facebook and Twitter as well. This Eclipse Facebook page has over 21,000 likes, and the official Twitter profile for the series has over 321,000 followers.

  • Yahoo Monetizes its Log-In Page

    Yahoo has unveiled a new display ad unit for the Yahoo log-in page. "The new ad unit enables marketers to creatively spotlight their brands on one of the most-trafficked destinations on the Internet for the first time," a representative for Yahoo tells WebProNews.

    The log-in page is visited by about one in ten Americans every day, according to Yahoo. The rep says, "The Yahoo! login page will now provide marketers with a new premium advertising solution to reach online audiences at mass scale by transforming the page into a large palette for highly artistic and impactful creative execution."

    "This new ad unit will also be a part of Yahoo!’s Digital AdVentures program, announced earlier this year,’ the company says. "The program is meant to provide a proving ground for Yahoo! and its advertising partners to collaborate on piloting next-generation advertising solutions as well as conduct and publish research from these programs."

    Chevy is the first marketer to utilize the unit, with a three-day campaign that will promote the Malibu, Traverse and Equinox.

    Ads on Yahoo's Log-in Page

    Users will be able to click on a link placed within the background art that takes them to a page with more information on the Chevrolet model displayed. This particular campaign will run from today until  the16th.

    "Developed in-house, this ad unit utilizes Yahoo!’s rich media solution to deliver a scalable, engaging, and custom consumer experience," Yahoo tells us.

    Mitch Spolan, Yahoo’s VP of North America field sales offered the following statement: "We’re committed to providing marketers with the ability to stand out and connect with online audiences by redefining the digital canvas and offering massive reach. There’s no better example of this than the new ad unit on our login page, one of the Internet’s most visited pages, which offers advertisers an opportunity to show off their artistic prowess, with scale that few advertising opportunities can match."

    The Yahoo log-in page will no doubt be a coveted spot, and should provide a nice return for Yahoo. As the company says, it allows it for the first time to monetize one of the most visited pages it has.

  • Consumers More Likely to Buy From Ads on Media Sites Than Social Media?

    Consumers More Likely to Buy From Ads on Media Sites Than Social Media?

    The Online Publishers Association has revealed some findings from research on how brands are perceived across content in different online environments. Specifically, it looks at how environments like media publications (such as ESPN.com, iVillage, NYTimes.com, Wall Street Journal, etc.), portal channels (such as AOL News, MSN Money, Yahoo Sports, etc.), and social networks (Facebook, MySpace, etc.) impact content and its advertisers.

    OPA President Pam Horan "The goal of our research was to help brand marketers better understand why consumers receive and respond to online brand advertising differently depending on the content environment in which the message appears," explains OPA president Pam Horan. "Our findings show that site destination matters as trust and relevant content are perceived differently across content environments.  This study concludes that consumers perceive and take action differently depending on where the advertiser’s message appears."

    According to the research, 80% of participants who have purchased brands as a result of online ads say they have a strong, positive emotional connection to the sites where the ads ran.

    The OPA and Harris Interactive ran statistical correlations to understand whether there is a relationship between how content is perceived in these environments and how advertisers are received and responded to. For reference, correlations measure the strength of the relationship between two variables, and can range from -1 to +1, with zero being no relationship. With that in mind, here are some key findings:

    – Sites with relevant content correlate strongly with audiences being loyal to these sites (a correlation score of .445)

    – Sites with trusted content correlate strongly with the sites’ advertisers being perceived as reputable (a correlation score of .388)

    – Brands perceived as relevant are more likely to have a response to their online ads (a correlation score of .353)

    More interesting yet are the environment-specific findings. According to the research, consumers are more likely to trust content on media sites (72%) than on portal channels (60%) and social media (23%). Audiences on media sites are significantly more likely to believe these sites’ advertisers are high quality and reputable (24%), compared to portal channels (20%) and social media (8%), the OPA says.

    "The study clearly concludes that online media proprieties offer advertisers a distinct brand halo effect for their advertising messages," says Horan.

    Of course social media gives advertisers a direct connection with consumers, by letting them become fans/followers, which can be a brand’s most loyal customers.

  • Promoted Trends May Mean More Ad Revenue For Twitter

    Twitter’s preparing to take another step away from its revenue-less past, according to a new report.  Rumor has it that a fresh "Promoted Trends" feature will complement the system of Promoted Tweets the company’s already devised.

    Peter Kafka wrote this afternoon, "Advertisers will be able to insert their own term into the list of trends that Twitter displays on users’ home pages and on its login page.  Clicking on that term would call up a Twitter search results page, which would feature that advertisers’ ‘Promoted Tweet’ at the top of the results."

    (Note: Ian McKellen’s announcement doesn’t have anything to do with the Promoted Trends concept.  It’s just kind of great in its own right, which is why we’ve left both the trending topics bar and his message undarkened.) 

    Kafka then added, "Advertisers who have heard Twitter talk about the product say the service imagines charging ‘tens of thousands of dollars’ a day for exclusive placement rights."

    Feel free to let us know what you think of the idea.  It could, of course, prove intrusive or annoying, as ads often do.  Or it might meet with some success (consider this: aren’t you more interested in Pepsi, Nike, and Netflix than Justin Bieber?)

    Anyway, Twitter’s admitted that it will probably run an experiment, but if or when it will implemented Promoted Trends on a wide/permanent basis is hard to say for sure.

  • Yahoo Achieves Display Ads/TV Market Advance

    Today marks a significant win for the Yahoo in terms of advertising deals and traditional media.  Media General, a communications company with a market cap of around $250 million, announced that it will become the first member of the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium to sell Yahoo display ads at TV stations.

    YahooThis move didn’t come out of the blue; it actually follows the completion of a pilot program in four markets.  That makes it all the more important since success has been proven possible, though, and Media General will now be going "all in" by committing eight additional TV stations.

    Curious what that means in terms of dollars and cents?  A Media General statement gave a little background information, revealing, "Media General generated $7 million in Yahoo! revenues at its newspapers in 2009 . . . and the company estimates that amount will grow to approximately $10 million in 2010."

    Then it got to the new part: "The sale of Yahoo! Display advertising by the company’s television stations is expected to increase Media General’s total Yahoo! Display revenues by approximately 50 percent on an annualized basis."

    Yahoo no doubt hopes that these figures inspire other companies to follow suit.

    A hat tip goes to Robin Wauters, in any event.

  • Google Lets AdWords Advertisers Analyze Their Competition

    Google has introduced a new "Analyze Competition" feature for AdWords advertisers. It can be found in the "opportunities" tab.

    The feature examines the account’s activity over two weeks, and lists categories that represent the products/services you’re advertising. These are based on search terms and are matched up against your keywords, ad text, and landing page text. For each category associated with the account, users will see a bar graph highlighting individual performance compared to the performance of other advertisers in the category.

    "When you hover over the data in the ‘Competitive Range’ column, you’ll be able to see more details such as the exact size of your competitive range, the mean and median performance levels for this range, as well as data on the absolute top and bottom performers," explains Emily Williams of Google’s Inside AdWords crew.

    "It’s important to remember that data in ‘Analyze competition’ is anonymous, and as part of our commitment to protect your privacy, we don’t reveal information about any advertiser’s identity," notes Williams. 

    Sidenote: WebProNews spoke with Benny Blum of eSearchVision at SMX, who had some interesting things to say about quality score:

    The feature is only available to a small number of advertisers using the English language AdWords interface for now, but Google says it will expand availability in the near future.

    More information about the feature can be found here.

  • Nationwide Rollout Of Google Tags Begins

    Nationwide Rollout Of Google Tags Begins

    Google Tags, the program meant to give local businesses a better way of standing out from other search results, is growing up.  Google announced late yesterday that it’s concocted a couple new features, and that it’s rolling out the program on a nationwide basis, too.

    Google Tags On Mobile SearchThe rollout will not equate to an immediate launch.  Business owners in California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, and Washington are due to see Google Tags become available before everyone else, and afterwards, Google’s just said it will update a FAQ as things progress.

    On to the new features, then.  First of all, the program now accommodates would-be customers who aren’t sitting in front of computers.  A post on the LatLong Blog explained, "Tags now appears on mobile web searches as well, helping your local customers quickly identify what’s unique about your business while they’re on the go."

    Secondly, "Posts, a new kind of Tag that enables business owners to create a custom message, is also live.  These messages can be changed as often as the business owner would like, making it easy to let the world know about a special discount or limited-time offer."

    The Tags program seems likely to prove rather popular with small business owners since the monthly fee is just $25.  Look for little yellow boxes to become a common sight next to firm’s listings on Google.

  • Yahoo and Microsoft Still Aiming for Holidays for Integration

    Update: As we reported months ago, Yahoo and Microsoft hope to get their search/advertising integration in place in time for the holidays. The Wall Street Journal has now confirmed that this is still the case.

    Original Article (03/09): Yahoo’s line of thinking with regards to the big Microsoft/Yahoo search and advertising deal is that it will benefit both Microsoft and Yahoo’s advertisers, as well as consumers and publishers.

    It will benefit advertisers because it will increase search volume, with results from both Bing and Yahoo being taken into consideration. It will benefit consumers because by combining advertisers from both properties, there will be a greater pool to deliver sponsored results from, which Yahoo says will mean increased relevance. It will benefit Yahoo, Bing, and their publisher partners with increased liquidity, participation, and relevance. That is basically the sum of it, according to Yahoo Vice President of Search Advertising David Pann.

    WebProNews recently sat down with Pann and discussed these things and how the deal will affect advertisers.

    According to Pann, the migration across all international markets will occur over the next 24 months or so, but they will not rush it at the expense of quality, they say. "Our focus is really about developing a plan that is smooth, seamless, and with quality. So we anticipate doing the U.S. migration sometime before the holiday season in 2010," says Pann.

    In the above interview, Pann goes on to talk about how things will be split between Yahoo and Microsoft. He also addresses some privacy concerns, related to data sharing between the two companies.

    WebProNews also interviewed Yahoo Sr. VP of Search Products Shashi Seth and Director of Search Marketing David Roth, both of whom talked about the deal in more detail. You can catch both of those interviews, as well as a recent keynote from SMX West where the deal was also discussed, here.

  • Google Introduces AdWords Campaign Experiments

    Today Google introduced AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE), a tool designed to optimize AdWords accounts by letting advertisers test and measure changes to keywords, bids, ad groups, and placements.

    "In the past, the most common way to measure how changes to your account affected your campaign performance was to measure how the campaign performed before and after you implemented your changes," says product marketing manager Courtney Lischke. "However, this type of analysis can often be complicated by events that occur during the test period, including holidays, weekends, or changes to end user or advertiser behavior."

    "ACE allows you to perform faster, more accurate tests by executing your experimental campaign alongside your original campaign," says Lischke. "By performing this type of simultaneous split test, we can tell you precisely if your campaign changes produce statistically significant results."

    Advertisers using ACE can measure things like the incremental impact of adding new keywords to their campaigns or changing keyword and ad group-level bids, the value of restructuring content campaigns to use more tightly themed ad groups, the change in volume by using different keywords match types, etc.

    There are more how-to videos here, and an FAQ page here you can refer to for more info.

    ACE is currently being tested, and Google is inviting U.S. advertisers to participate. Not all applicants will be accepted for beta testing, however.

  • Google Gives YouTube Advertisers Campaign Insights Tool

    Last year Google launched Campaign Insights for AdWords. This is at tool for advertisers to see data about their campaigns’ performance. Google has now launched this tool for YouTube ad campaigns.

    It’s only available for campaigns that are reserved in advance, and not those bought in the AdWords auction. YouTube says it can only measure the effects of large campaigns, but it’s working hard on expanding into smaller ones.

    "Campaign Insights compares the impact of a campaign on a large groups of users who were exposed to a display ad campaign with the impact on a similar group who were not exposed to the campaign," explains Product Marketing Manager Peter Sherman. "Specifically, it then calculates the incremental lift in both online search activity and website visits — a good indicator of advertising effectiveness. Our models are even sophisticated enough to identify the incremental lift that was specifically caused by the display campaign (as opposed to incidentally correlated.)"

    YouTube Campaign Insights

    "YouTube is increasingly becoming a key advertising platform for marketers of all kinds, from new display advertisers to some of the biggest brands in the world," says Sherman. "A common need for all advertisers is to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns beyond click-through rates or the basic number of impressions. This is especially true for video advertising, which can have a powerful, lasting brand effect beyond click-throughs or conversions."

    Advertisers who wish to use Campaign Insights with YouTube campaigns are instructed to contact their Google sales representative.

  • MySpace Partners with Ad.ly on In-Stream Ads

    MySpace announced today that it has struck a deal with Ad.ly, an ad service that serves in-stream advertisements, known mostly for its Twitter-related efforts. The deal will let content creators across MySpace (including celebrities, filmmakers, musicians and "social influencers") reach their fans and monetize their activity via the MySpace stream and Ad.ly, MySpace says.

    "MySpace pioneered tools for musicians and now with this new relationship with Ad.ly we’re doing the same for our community of social leaders – allowing monetization of the activity stream,” said Sean Percival, Director of Content Socialization for MySpace. "This deal provides publishers with the opportunity to associate themselves with brands that represent and reflect their personas online."

    "We’re excited to enable MySpace’s most influential users to monetize their audiences by bringing them onto our in-stream advertising platform and connecting them with our stable of top-tier advertisers," said Derek Rey, Vice President of Sales for Ad.ly. "Adding MySpace’s stream as a new channel on Ad.ly considerably extends the reach of our network making it even more compelling for advertisers looking to be part of the broader stream ecosystem."

    Example of an Ad.ly Tweet

    Starting today, MySpace publishers can sign up with Ad.ly and create a profile. Once registered, they can decide which messages from advertisers they want to support, and Ad.ly will deliver the approved messages via the activity stream.

    Ad.ly now claims to reach over 50 million unique users on Twitter and MySpace. Advertisers can choose to have their ads sent through Twitter accounts into the Twitter stream or through MySpace accounts into the MySpace stream (or both).

  • Facebook Sees 400% Rise In Advertisers Since Early ’09

    It seems that marketers can’t get enough of Facebook.  During a period in which many companies were just trying not to lay off workers and/or go bankrupt, Facebook managed to increase the number of organizations advertising with it by over 400 percent.

    This statistic doesn’t come from a random blogger’s back-of-the-envelope calculations or some data firm’s small case study.  Brian Womack reported today, "Facebook . . . said its advertisers have more than quadrupled since the start of 2009 as marketers aim to get their products before a growing global audience."

    Facebook didn’t achieve that growth by hiring a crazy number of new salespeople, either.  Womack wrote that it just "doubled the number of salespeople last year from 2008, according to an e-mailed statement."

    Either Facebook’s salespeople are sprouting extra arms, then, or more than a few advertisers are approaching the social network on their own at this point.  Potentially many more than a few, too, since Facebook is notorious for being conservative when making information public.

    Unfortunately, though, Facebook didn’t share any more info (conservative or not) when it came to the very interesting subject of what sort of revenue all this advertising is generating.

  • AdMob Launches SDK, 2 Ad Formats for iPad

    AdMob Launches SDK, 2 Ad Formats for iPad

    AdMob, which was recently acquired by Google, has announced the launch of its iPad App SDK (software developer kit). A representative for the company tells WebProNews, "AdMob was one of the first companies to launch ad units for both iPhone and Android applications, and now it is driving innovation on the iPad and helping developers start monetizing their iPad applications."

    The SDK is available for all publishers. It runs across all devices using the iPhone OS, and supports tow ad formats in native iPad apps: text & tile ads and image ads, both of which are available in the three IAB standard ad sizes: 300×250, 728×90, and 468×60.

    iPad formats from AdMob

    "As part of its commitment to innovation on mobile platforms, AdMob is also giving a sneak preview of the creative potential of iPad ads using HTML5,"  the rep notes. This can be viewed in a video embedded in this blog post. 

    According to AdMob, 38% of iPads are already outside of the US, after the initial international release only occurring last weekend. The top five countries, according to AdMob data for May were the United States (58%), Japan (5%), United Kingdom (4%), China (4%), and Canada (3%).

    Publishers can download the iPad SDK by logging into their AdMob account and selecting ‘Add Site/App’ from the ‘Sites & Apps’ tab in the navigation bar located at the top of the page.

  • Report: Google Acquires Invite Media

    The difficulties Google encountered while trying to acquire AdMob apparently didn’t cause the company to give up on a related purchase.  A new report indicates that Google has bought Invite Media, which deals in advertising tech, for perhaps $70 million.

    Invite Media’s specialty is display media, and as its homepage makes clear, it offers a universal buying platform with ties to all sorts of organizations.  Another item of interest is the second mention of Yahoo in the "News" column.

    Then here’s a third curious fact: Invite Media is quite quiet for an advertising company, considering the last corporate tweet was made on May 11th and the only official blog post dates from November 26th.  It’s anybody’s guess whether the firm’s been tied up in negotiations, working on top-secret projects, or is just low on writers.

    Anyway, Peter Kafka reported earlier today, "Google has indeed bought ad technology startup Invite Media, I’ve confirmed with multiple sources."

    As for what Google will do with the property, Kafka continued, "People familiar with the transaction say Google’s plan is to leave Invite running as a stand-alone unit, which will work at arm’s length with exchanges like Google’s AdX as well as competitors like OpenX, Yahoo’s Right Media and Microsoft’s AdECN."

    Integration between Invite Media and DoubleClick is only supposed to occur over a significant period of time.

  • Google Lets Brand Advertisers Target Top Sites

    Google has announced a new filter for advertisers running brand campaigns, to allow their ads to only show on AdSense sites ranked among the top 1,000 largest on the web, as defined by the DoubleClick Ad Planner. Google says this will ensure ads reach a large number of users, but only on well-known sites "best suited for branding goals."

    "It’s important to note that the Ad Planner 1000 does not take performance statistics into account, and that by enabling this filter, you may be excluding many sites that are relevant to your advertised products," says Katrina Kurnit of Google’s Inside AdSense Crew. "Additionally, with this or any of our other brand filters enabled, your campaign will run on fewer sites, so you may need to raise your bids if you’d like to maintain your impression levels. We recommend experimenting to determine which feature or combination of features best meets your goals."

    "We hope this new feature gives you greater control and assurance over where your ads appear and makes the Google Content Network an even more powerful environment for effective branding campaigns," says Kurnit.

    DoubleClick Top 1000

    To activate the filter, advertisers should select "none Ad Planner 1000" in the category filters section of their AdWords account.

    The new filter is only one of the new features Google has introduced, which integrate DoubleClick Ad Planner data with other Google ad solutions. There is also a new Export to AdWords feature and a list creation tool, which lets you store sites and placements in lists for future use.

  • Google and DISH Network Renew Advertising Partnership

    Last week at Google I/O, we witnessed the unveiling of Google TV. One of Google’s launch partners is DISH Network, who will offer the service to its customers beginning in the fall, via its HD DVR receivers.

    Google’s relationship with DISH Network goes back much further than this announcement, however. Since 2007, the two companies have had a partnership around Google’s TV Ads, the television advertising arm of its AdWords service. Google has now announced that this relationship is expanding.

    "For the past three years, DISH Network has been one of Google’s strongest partners in the TV advertising space," says Google TV Ads product marketing manager Neha Mandal. "Back in 2007, DISH embraced our emerging TV ads platform by signing on as our first partner and has since been an innovative thought leader with Google throughout the growth of this business."

    "We’re happy to announce that we’ve renewed and strengthened our partnership with DISH Network and will continue to offer great inventory across over 95 networks on DISH," adds Mandal. "Through Google’s TV Ads platform, advertisers can continue targeting audiences across networks like Animal Planet, CNN, MSNBC, NFL Network, TBS, USA and over 90 others."

    Google says to be on the look out for more new features and targeting options coming soon to the Google TV Ads platform, which is just one of many ways you can expect Google to continue its penetration into television advertising, if Google TV becomes as big as many are expecting.

    In a recent article, we looked at how Google might accomplish this. The company seems to view moving into the TV format similar to what it has already accomplished with mobile via Android. Google says it will likely develop new ad formats for Google TV in the future, but at first they’re just concentrating on delivering a good product.

  • Metacafe Launches Site Focused On Movies

    Metacafe Launches Site Focused On Movies

    Metacafe is introducing a new site focused on movies called Metacafe Movies.

    The company says Metacafe Movies will offer original programming, behind-the-scenes clips, trailers and a 3-D showcase. The site will also feature a section for HD movie trailers along with a guide to summer blockbusters.

    "Our singular focus is on building the premier movie and entertainment online video site, delivering a great experience for our viewers and valuable marketing results to our advertisers," said Erick Hachenburg, CEO of Metacafe.


    Metacafe Movies Launched! – The most popular videos are here

    "The launch of Metacafe Movies is an important milestone in this endeavour and one that we will continue to build on in the coming months."

    The Metacafe Movies editorial team includes people formerly of Netflix and Rotten Tomatoes who will curate the content on the site.

    Metacafe says it has increased its movies-related advertising revenues by more than 70 percent over the past year and it’s hoping its new movie site will help to continue that trend.
     

  • Google Reveals AdSense Revenue Share, Is it Satisfactory?

    Google Reveals AdSense Revenue Share, Is it Satisfactory?

    Google has kept its AdSense revenue share numbers a secret for quite some time, but has now decided to disclose them – or at least some of them. They’ve revealed the percentages for AdSense for Content and AdSense for Search, but are remaining mum on some of the other offerings. Still, content and search are the two biggies.

    Is Google’s revenue split better or worse than you expected? Let us know.

    The company says this is an effort to increase transparency (though the situation in Italy likely played a significant role), and is now displaying the revenue shares right in the new AdSense interface, in the ‘Account Information’ section of the ‘Account Settings’ page (the numbers will also be available soon in the existing interface).

    Neal Mohan Talks AdSense revenue share"AdSense for content publishers, who make up the vast majority of our AdSense publishers, earn a 68% revenue share worldwide," says Neal Mohan VP, Product Management. "This means we pay 68% of the revenue that we collect from advertisers for AdSense for content ads that appear on your sites. The remaining portion that we keep reflects Google’s costs for our continued investment in AdSense — including the development of new technologies, products and features that help maximize the earnings you generate from these ads. It also reflects the costs we incur in building products and features that enable our AdWords advertisers to serve ads on our AdSense partner sites. Since launching AdSense for content in 2003, this revenue share has never changed."

    "We pay our AdSense for search partners a 51% revenue share, worldwide, for the search ads that appear through their implementations," adds Mohan. "As with AdSense for content, the proportion of revenue that we keep reflects our costs, including the significant expense, research and development involved in building and enhancing our core search and AdWords technologies. The AdSense for search revenue share has remained the same since 2005, when we increased it."

    John Battelle brought up some confusion around a 15% "serving" fee, known as an "AFC Deduction", which he says was commonly used for negotiated contracts with large publishers, but Google says it was never used for publishers who signed up directly on the Google website. The company told him, "There is no 15% serving, or any other, fee for those online publishers."

    In fact, Arlene from Google’s Inside AdSense team stepped into the comments on the announcement to address this and other questions that had been coming up. She said:

    The 68% revenue share for AdSense for content applies to all online publishers, and is not an average revenue share. If you’re showing AdSense for content ads on your pages, you’re receiving 68% of the amount advertisers pay for those ads. While the revenue share can vary for some major online publishers with whom we negotiate individual contracts, these amounts are not in any way averaged together. Also, there isn’t anything additional taken off the top. You get 68 percent, period.

    The transparency around revenue share could become more critical if Facebook ends up offering its own AdSense-like product around the Open Graph. This has been widely speculated upon, and if it ever comes to fruition, it could become a real competitor to AdSense due to the comprehensive targeting abilities that would come with it.

    Do you think a Facebook ad network would make for a worthy competitor to AdSense? Comment here.

    Danny Sullivan suggests that Google’s transparency could lead to competitors offering up better deals, but Google appears comfortable with its competition thus far. "We believe our revenue share is very competitive, and the vast number of advertisers who compete to appear on AdSense sites helps to ensure that you’re earning the most from every ad impression," says Mohan.

    At this point, Google is still not disclosing its revenue shares for AdSense for mobile applications, feeds, or games. The reason for this the company gives, is that these are still evolving, and they’re still learning about the costs associated with supporting them. Revenue shares may change in the future, but they don’t have any changes planned yet.

    Does knowing the AdSense revenue share percentages change the way you feel about the AdSense program? Tell us what you think.

  • How Will Advertising Work on Google TV?

    During the keynote at Google I/O last week, in which Google introduced both Google TV and the latest version of Android (Froyo), VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra talked about advertising with regards to mobile (and this was before the AdMob acquisition got the green light from the FTC). "It turns out we know a little bit about advertising," he said (and I’m paraphrasing, based on my live notes from the event). "This year is Google’s tenth anniversary of providing ad solutions. We’ve learned a few things. If you want a healthy ecosystem, you need advertisers and we have hundreds of thousands of them. We’re not new at this game."

    "We have some tools like DoubleClick, Analytics, AdSense, AdWords, – the tools the industry knows and loves are being extended to the mobile environment," he added. He may have said these things with mobile in mind, but it doesn’t change much when you think about TV. If anything, you can ad Google TV Ads to the conversation.

    In fact, throughout that day at the Google I/O event, there were multiple parallels drawn between Google TV and Android apart from the fact that they actually integrate with one another. For example, during a press conference I attended, Jason Kincaid asked if the web was ready for big screens, and Google Senior Product Manager Rishi Chandra said that we’d probably see a similar situation play out as we did with mobile in that sites will start optimizing for that experience.

    Gundotra said that just like they’ve built ad formats for Android, they’ll probably do the same for Google TV too.

    Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who was also in that press conference, noted that ads will be on websites, sold through websites, and they’ll be sold through Dish Network (one of the Google TV launch partners). One can only assume that future partnerships may also play a role in how advertisers are able to reach Google TV users.

    The bottom line is that there will be no one way to reach users. Then of course, there are the ad opportunities within and around the content itself, which would obviously be on a by-provider basis.

    During the conference, Google TV Technical Director Vincent Dureau said Google’s building a platform – yes it’s going to create opportunities for Google, he said,  but it’s going to create them for everyone else too.

    Chandra said, "We want to get the product experience right first."

    That experience will not even be available until the fall, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens. In the future, Google will likely roll out new ad formats and solutions as time progresses past the product’s general availability. Like with everything else Google does, we can no doubt expect gradual improvements and tweaks over time.

    If there’s one thing for certain, it’s if Google TV really does take off and become a household name, advertising with Google will be more attractive than ever. It would be interesting to see the kind of cross-format web/TV campaigns that would come out of it.

  • Google Generated $54b for Businesses, Publishers, Non-profits in ’09

    Google has released a report that details its economic impact in each of the 50 states in the U.S. In the report, Google says it generated $54 billion of economic activity for American businesses, website publishers, and non-profits in 2009.

    "In a time of tighter budgets and a slow economic recovery, we’re glad to support so many small businesses and entrepreneurs across the country by helping them find new customers more efficiently and monetize their websites through targeted advertising," says Claire Hughes Johnson, Vice President, Global Online Sales.

    "The report is filled with really wonderful stories about the direct economic impact that AdWords, AdSense, Google Grants and our search engine have across the country," she adds. "These are the stories of entrepreneurs across the country growing their businesses with Google."

    In addition to the report, if you go to this site, you can look at each state on a Google Maps application, to see how much economic activity Google’s generated.

    The lengthy report can be found in its entirety here (pdf).