From MediaPost:

A FORMER PARTICIPANT IN GOOGLE’S AdSense program has roiled the online publishing community by alleging that Google’s pricing system penalizes publishers that have even one low-performing site. In an Oct. 25 post to WebMasterWorld, the former AdSense publisher, “Kurtpdx,” claimed an AdSense representative told him that one low-performing site could cause Google to lower the ad prices of all sites in the publisher’s account…

Jupiter Research Analyst Gary Stein said Kurtpdx’s revelation, if true, is a rare window into how Google’s advertising “black box” operates, and it shows that Yahoo! Publishing Network, by allowing publishers more insight into how they price ads, has found a chink in the market leader’s armor. “The way you compete against Google for B2B accounts is to say–well, we’re willing to share with you information: ‘We’re more responsive, it’s not a black box here’,” he said.

Nevertheless, Stein said, it’s unlikely that such a tactic would force Google to change its ways and release more information to the publishers. “You’d have to dangle them off the pier and shake them upside down to get them to release information,” he said. “It’s counter to their nature to reveal their inner workings.”

And of course, we’re all curious about the PageRank black box as well.

Technorati tags: AdSense, Google, Advertising, Marketing