Google minimum Adsense payout.

One of the reasons that AdSense is such a cash cow for Google is that its terms of service mean that as a Google AdSense publisher you will not receive a payment from them until your account has accrued $100. Now for many small scale publishers it can take a long time to reach this amount. In fact for the less serious blogger of website publisher it might seem like a lifetime!

Google holds back these amounts less than £100 until the publisher reaches this amount and then makes payment. Until payment is made this money is held in Google's own accounts and it shows on Google's balance sheet as "accrued revenue share". At the end of 2006 the amount held back by Google in this way amounted to over $370million. Google of course earns interest on this amount. Many will feel that this money actually belongs to Google's publisher customers and that Google is profiting at their expense.

There are Ad programs that sell themselves on the basis of not having a minimum payout like this and this may often be a selling point in their favour. ( check out a list of Adsense alternatives. For Google it may seem that, apart from the welcome extra revenue for them, there are also genuine reasons for holding payment in this way. They might argue for example that this puts a delay in the system which makes the detection of click fraud more likely.

Google may be shortsighted in this. If they reduced the minimum amount they would be likely to further stimulate interest in their program. Google clearly feel they do not need to stimulate their AdSense program further in this way. Maybe the $370million bird in the hand is better than the bird in the bush.