jretzer - 5:33 pm on Apr 11, 2005 (gmt 0)

I *am* an economist and you haven't followed the supply and demand thing all the way through.

If the number of publishers outstrips the number of advertisers, then some (many?) of those publishers will see nothing but non-paying public service ads (or, they will get a lot of those 2cent clicks like I have). This will drive those publishers to seek other forms of revenue. So the number of publishers will fall back to equilibrium.

It also works on the other side. If advertisers far outstrip publishers, then that will increase payments to publishers. This will drive others to enter the market, and once more, things will fall back to equilibrium.

This effect will only become more evident as other google-like ad bureaus come on line.