Money & metrics · also called estimated earnings, intraday revenue, preliminary revenue
Estimated revenue
Estimated revenue is the provisional earnings figure a search feed reports soon after clicks happen, before final checks for invalid traffic are complete.
Feeds report money in two passes. The first pass is quick: within hours, the operator sees what recent clicks appear to have earned. Google's AdSense help describes these earnings as shown quickly and then adjusted downward as invalid clicks are identified, with most adjustments visible within about 48 hours and more possible at month end.
Estimated revenue is what every day-to-day decision in search arbitrage runs on. Bids, budgets, automation rules and the values sent back to ad platforms through a Conversions API all use it, because waiting weeks for certainty is not an option when traffic is bought by the hour. Trackers often label the earliest figures "intraday" revenue.
It should be read as an upper bound. The gap between estimated and finalised revenue varies by operator and by traffic source. Clean traffic loses little; poor traffic can lose a great deal. A sensible operator tracks their own historical gap per source and plans on estimated revenue minus that haircut. When buying through a feed provider, the estimate also depends on how and when the provider passes Google's or Bing's data along.
An example
Say a campaign shows $1,000 estimated revenue on $800 spend, a 25% ROI. If this source has historically lost 12% between estimate and final, plan on $880: a 10% ROI.
Related terms
Finalised revenue
Finalised revenue is the confirmed amount a feed will actually pay for a period, after invalid clicks and other adjustments have been deducted from the estimate.
Clawback (revenue deduction)
A clawback is revenue a feed removes from a publisher's earnings after the fact, usually because clicks were judged invalid and the advertiser was refunded.
Revenue reporting delay
Revenue reporting delay is the gap between a visitor clicking a feed ad and the arbitrageur seeing, and later confirming, the revenue for that click.
Invalid traffic (IVT)
Invalid traffic is any click, search or ad view that does not come from a real person with genuine interest, whether caused by bots, fraud or honest accident.
Reporting API
A reporting API is a programmatic interface that lets software automatically fetch revenue, cost or performance data from a feed, ad platform or tracker.
ROI (return on investment)
ROI is profit expressed as a percentage of what was spent: revenue minus cost, divided by cost.
Sources: Google AdSense Help: Clicks and earnings removed from your reports, ClickFlare: Search arbitrage tracking