Google reducing referral ad payments

Google has made an anouncement that will effect the income of Adsense publishers who are earning from referral Ads.

Referral ads are paid on a conversion basis where a conversion is a specific action defined by the advertiser. The action may be a sale or perhaps a clickthrough to a specific page on an advertiser site, or an online sign-up.

Google claim that they are trying to make sure that conversions generated by referral ads are valid. It seems that the approach that they have adopted for doing this will mean that for publishers displayinng referrals for non-Google products, the earnings for the ad may now be less than the maximum referral value displayed for that ad.

Google will place a restriction on referral earnings while click and conversion data is monitored for a period to ensure conversions are valid. After this monitoring period the publisher will earn the maximum value of the conversions.
Google have refused too indicate how long the validation period will last but say it will vary by publisher. They claim most will be little affected.

According to Google advertisers will only be charged maximum referral value once a publisher has completed the validation period.

Inside AdSense: Getting more quality inventory for publishers