MSN article/gallery insights and ad revenue share FAQs

Total number of monetized Display & Native ad impressions attributed to partner content, including web and applications.

Total number of times an active user viewed/refreshed the page attributed to partner content, including web and applications.

Revenue assigned to the partner, less market fees, prior to applying the revenue share percentage for delivered ad impressions on their brand's content page views.  

This is the % identified in the partner’s contract that will be applied to the Net Revenue assigned to the partner.

This is the actual Revenue Share to be paid based on contractual RevShare % applied to the allocated Net Revenue.

As of October 2025, Earnings Statements do not contain Time Spent.   Current estimated release for Time Spent in Earnings Statements is Q1 2026.

Delivered Ad Impressions reflect ads served on your content, even if no matching page view is recorded in our systems for the same Market, Vertical, and PageType.  Despite rigorous quality checks, this can happen due to differences in how multiple first- and third-party platforms capture data.  While these mismatches are rare, Microsoft ensures partners are compensated for user engagement. If an ad was delivered on your content, we treat it as engagement and include it in revenue share calculations. 

There are two locations in your statement where you will find this information:  

Summary Tab and Display & Native detailed tab

Summary tab:  will show total Page Views, Total Delivered Ad Impressions & RevShare for Article & Gallery content combined:

Display & Native Detailed Tab: will show total Page Views, Total Delivered Ad Impressions & RevShare broken out by Page Type (Articles separate from Galleries) for each Brand, Market & Vertical:

You can see this on the Earning Report Tab on MSPH.  In the graph below, you will see two new ad revenue share types (Article Earnings, Gallery Earnings).  

You can also select from the <Ad Scenarios> dropdown box on the right side the Analytics section of the Earnings report page and specifically select Article Earnings or Gallery Earnings.

Time Spent is a new user consumption metric for partners available Oct. 30th, 2025. Time Spent is the total amount of time (in seconds) users spend engaging article & gallery content.  It is available across existing consumption attributes (Market, Vertical, Content Type, etc.), as well as, by Brand, Headline, or across all Brands.

Time Spent per UU is also a new user consumption metric for partners available Oct. 30th, 2025. Time Spent per UU is the average amount of time (in seconds) unique users spend engaging article & gallery content. Please note that this metric is only shown in the Overview Snapcard.

Time Spent is a new user consumption metric for partners available Oct. 30th, 2025. The data available will be from Oct. 1st, 2025.

Beginning with September 2025 earnings (published in the October 15th statement), Article and Gallery RevShare is based on delivered ad impressions for both display and native ads. This replaces the previous mix of page views for native ads and ad impressions for display ads. 

Not explicitly. The basis of RevShare for Articles & Galleries is AdImpressions.  However, there is a correlation between users spending time engaging your content and the number of Ad Impressions delivered (i.e., the more time spent engaging with your content, the more ad impressions are delivered, and the more revenue is earned).  The new Time Spent metric launching October 30, will provide more insights into user engagement, however, since actual time spent is not a basis of the RevShare calculation, it is an analytics metric only.  Over time, it may help partners understand where deeper engagement leads to more Ad Impressions.

Articles don’t necessarily earn more than galleries.  How deeply a user engages the content determines the revenue earned (i.e., the more time spent engaging with your content, the more ad impressions are delivered, and the more revenue is earned).   Generally speaking, an article has more native ads per page than galleries, while at the same time, an engaged gallery generates more display ads than an article as users advance through multiple slides within the gallery.  Partners relying solely on gallery content may see lower ad revenue unless engagement depth is high.

Republishing content in a different format may be acceptable, but duplicated headlines or content could trigger ingestion rules. If you plan to republish, ensure the format and headline are clearly differentiated. When in doubt, open a ticket with MSN Partner Hub Support.

Factors such as topic relevance, freshness, and quality affect how content is promoted and engaged. Review the strategies for increasing content engagement for tips on boosting engagement.

At this time, there is no stable data to show these insights. The team is looking for ways to identify and expose this data so partners can understand user interactions with their content, but no release updates are planned.

One is not better than the other.  Vertical vs. horizontal scroll is very dependent on user preference, device and quality of content.  

There is no existing factor or change to content ranking planned to promote one content type over another.

There will be no differentiation at this time.