Is this true?

Of course is true. But let’s clear some things up, because many confuses AdSense Premium Publisher with an AdSense account being invited in the optimization team. So, basically there are three clans, not two as many believed. I am a standard publisher, that’s why I can disclose some information about the other two clans. Well, only one as the Optimization Team is not interesting. And how do I got the information I will share now? Hmm, let’s say I know someone who is a Premium Publisher and he said one two things, which I am very grateful for.

So, how can someone get in the higher clans. This will be a great disappointment: it’s invitation based. You can search Google’s help articles until hurts, but you won’t find any information about the AdSense Optimization and Premium Publisher accounts. When you, better said your account meets some conditions, you will be invited to be part of the clan.

Conditions of being an AdSense Premium Publisher

First, let’s see some examples of AdSense Premium Publishers. Some Premium Publishers are (be aware that this is not an exhaustive list, just some examples) : Times, CNN, AOL, etc.
What is common on the above mentioned sites? They all get millions of visitors, daily. This is the condition most of us can only dream of. Many says you have to get users from 5 million search queries or 20 million page views. While this sounds logical, it’s doesn’t really true. The truth is that you have to have incredibly high number of visitors, more million of users to visit your site on daily basis. It’s not a fixed number. Your CTR also has to be outstanding, just as your CSS. You may wonder how, if the ads are coming through an IFrame generated by a remote Javascript.
And here comes the best part: they can choose whether the ads to be served as the usual HTML as we get the ads, or by Javascript. The latter means that a simple Javascript function is placed in the HTML of their pages. If you want to take a closer look on the Javascript, you can find it here: Premium Publisher’s Javascript Code. If the ads are served via this Javascript, they can generate their own ad structure, they can render the ads in a table, in a div, in whatever they want. The Javascript function from the above page will be used in the request which the ads are served through. If an AdSense account is enabled for serving through JavaScript, and only then. We, commoners can not use that function, no matter what.

So, the first obvious advantage is that they can edit their ads via CSS, this is the greatest advantage.

The second, i guess is that they can remove or edit the “Ads by Google” link from the ads which appear on their sites. Sincerely, I have nothing against that little link, more than that, if we’d all remove it, we’d confuse our users to hell, they wouldn’t know, or couldn’t make a difference between what’s an advertisement and what’s a common link.

The Adsense Premium Publishers can also choose how many ads to display on their website and in a specific ad-block too. Technically it’s possible, to get a page similar to a Google search result page, but with the difference that all the links would be advertisements. Again, I would be against this. This is, again, confusing for the user and is not good at all.

They also get a personal account manager and special technical support. The latter I didn’t realize yet what is used for, frankly, even a 5-year-old can copy-paste the ad code in the HTML, whatever. The personal account manager on the other hand can be useful. The Premium Publisher can ask about everything either by phone or email, starting from optimization tips to general how-to, everything related to AdSense.

Did you wonder why do you get only one cent per click? Would you like to filter out the ads which pays only a cent? The AdSense Premium Publishers can do it, and I think that’s their greatest benefit.

How much the premium publishers earn?

Due the optimization on their sites the CTR is higher with about 300-400% than the usual. That means, they can have incredibly high CTRs from 10% to 30% anywhere. Let’s say they get 5 million impressions. The 10% of 5 million is 500,000 (yeah, five hundred thousand) clicks… per day. Let’s say they get only 5 cents per click, that means 25,000 US dollars… again, per day. Go figure further…