fearlessrick - 2:14 pm on Mar 2, 2005 (gmt 0)

I think Yahoo has a solid stable of advertisers already. Remember, they were basically the inventors of online advertising (back in the days of banners all over their site).

They did, however, lose much of that business in the dotcom implosion, but I'm sure they're gearing up their prospect lists and the number of advertisers and amount of money coming into the internet will continue to grow at a very healthy rate for at least the next five years.

The development of competition in this space is going to be very, very good for publishers and advertisers.

I think we'll be seeing tiered payouts, i.e., bonus money for larger, loyal publishers.

How will Google respond? Try this: publishers who ONLY show G ads on their site(s) will receive a bonus share added each month. Y will do something similar, I suspect. Getting and retaining good publishers will become as or more important than getting high-paying advertisers.

A complete win-win for webmasters worldwide.