Google Reveals How It Splits Ad Sales

Google revealed how it splits advertising revenue with search and content publishers, a move made in response to calls from publishers and regulators for greater transparency.

The Internet company said in a blog post Monday that it pays publishers 68% of the revenue Google collects from advertisers for ads that appear adjacent to content on the publishers' sites. Google said it pays publishers that add a customer search engine to their websites 51% of the revenue it collects from those search ads. Google long had resisted calls to reveal its revenue split. But it recently proposed to do so in Italy in response to an antitrust probe sparked by Italian newspaper publishers' complaints that Google was abusing its dominant position in the country.