Business & finance · also called rev share, revenue split
Revenue share
A revenue share is an agreement in which partners split the money earned by an agreed percentage, such as an ad network paying a publisher 70% of ad revenue.
Revenue share is one of the most common ways ad tech partners get paid. Instead of a fixed price, the parties agree on percentages. An ad network might keep 30% and pay the publisher 70%; an SSP might take a 15% take rate; a content recommendation widget company shares click revenue with the sites that host its widgets; a mediation or header bidding wrapper vendor might take a small slice.
Rev-share aligns incentives, since both sides earn more when revenue grows, and it lowers risk for small partners who cannot pay fixed fees. Some deals include minimum guarantees, in which the platform promises a floor payment regardless of performance, which can put the platform under pressure to push monetisation hard.
The key questions are "a share of what?" and "measured by whom?" Shares can be calculated on gross revenue, net of fees, after invalid traffic deductions, or after clawbacks. Different definitions can shift real payouts significantly. In financial reporting, the payments to partners appear as traffic acquisition costs, relevant to Revenue ex-TAC metrics.
Think of it like this
A revenue share is like a busker splitting the hat's takings with the café that lets them play on its terrace.
An example
A podcast network sells US$100,000 of ads on a show and has a 60/40 revenue share with the creator: the creator receives US$60,000 and the network keeps US$40,000.
Related terms
Take rate
Take rate is the percentage of the money flowing through an ad tech platform that it keeps as its fee: platform revenue divided by the gross spend it handles.
Ad network
An ad network is a company that aggregates ad space from many publishers and resells it to advertisers, usually in packaged bundles and often with its own pricing and targeting.
Revenue ex-TAC
Revenue ex-TAC is revenue minus traffic acquisition costs (TAC), the amounts paid to publishers and partners for the ad space or traffic, showing what an ad company keeps.
Gross vs net revenue
Gross vs net revenue is the accounting choice between reporting everything customers pay (gross) or only what a company keeps after paying partners (net), which complicates comparisons.
Content recommendation widget
A content recommendation widget is a block of sponsored and editorial links, often under an article, that recommends stories or products and earns money when readers click the sponsored ones.