Battelle, AdSense and the Plus 50% Rule
Sometimes you do wonder about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Battelle is running a nice little story about (another) run in with the AdSense sales department. Those with long memories may remember him being contacted before by AdSense. Amazing that they have no record of a previous contact, or indeed had any idea how "influencial" he was in the blog world
She: Well, we don't divulge that information, but if you look at our SEC filings, you can see our numbers...Me: Yes, I know about your TAC, and it averages in the high seventies to low 80s, but that number is very difficult to understand - I know that you have set deals with sites like Ask and AOL, and those probably skew the overall TAC. I wonder if you are making up that high TAC by, well, dialing down the TAC with smaller publishers like Boing Boing. I mean, we have no idea if you are giving us high seventies, or taking 60 percent all for yourself!
She: We can't get into numbers, but we can say that we give the majority of the revenue to our publishers.
Me: Huh. That's the first time I've ever heard that - so more than fifty percent?
She: We can't give exact numbers out.
Me: Sure. I understand. That's your policy. Well, it's great of you to contact us, and we'll talk about it, and get back to you. Thanks.
She: Great! Let me know if there is anything I can do.
Who is he?
Why does everyone think John is 'the man' as he lost me in the first paragraph at Alexa.
Does he really think Google doesn't know where the traffic is?
I'm sure the Google toolbar tells them all they need to know without help from Alexa, sheesh.
Ummm John, if you can't get AdSense to target then you're site has issues, not to mention if he's REALLY that big of a fish they would offer to make him a premium publisher and they do give the percentage in the contract, and the ability to directly target ads.
Nice try poking fun at AdSense John as even my crappy site has direct targetting ability, need some mesothelioma ads anyone?
mining Alexa I called him
I called him out on that as well
She: We can't get into
She said the exact same thing the TAC says, just in a way that you'd construe as referring to small publishers. Read it slowly: "we can say that we give the majority of the revenue to our publishers." That wasn't "we can say that we give the majority of the revenue to publishers like boing boing or threadwatch."
Actually I don't think he
Actually I don't think he was wrong saying Alexa.
You honestly think the Adsense sales team is fully aware of all the data the engineers have, and how to use it? Yea right...