europeforvisitors - 3:54 pm on Dec 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

I think only the bigger publishers will have the luxury of options when it comes to choosing a third party advertising network.

Depends on what you mean by "bigger." I'd agree that the guy with a 20-page Web site who earns $5 a day doesn't have many options, and his earnings (and ECP and eCPM) may well drift downwards. However, traffic isn't everything; audience quality matters, too. That's why trade and enthusiast magazines can earn higher CPMs than, say, a tabloid newspaper with a huge national circulation.

And personally, although a "big research" firms tells us that display advertising is now the way to go, I think it's biased and I don't necessarily believe it. There is a huge amount of "blindness" when it come to display ads.

First of all, the trend is already happening, at least in some sectors. The limiting factor in the past has been a lack of ad networks and rep firms that target specific verticals.

As for ad blindness, I think that's a bigger problem for AdSense text ads than it is for on-topic display ads, simply because (a) AdSense ads have become a commodity and (b) there's no reason why a well-designed, relevant display ad shouldn't perform at least as well on the Web as in a magazine or newspaper. (Until recently, the problem with most display ads was that they were generic run-of-network ads, often for advertisers like credit-card companies, Internet casinos, and marginal software providers. That's starting to change, and display ads for widgets on quality sites about widgets can be expected to perform quite well.)

Competition might help keep the status quo for big publishers, but I don't see how an ad network can attract advertisers with cheaper ads, and not have it hurt publishers.

I don't think Google has any intention of attracting advertisers with cheaper ads across the board. I think we'll see more segmentation within the network, whether through automated techniques or via greater advertising controls. Google would be stupid to let AdSense remain the lowest-common-denominator, run-of-network medium that is is now, and stupidity isn't one of Google's corporate attributes.