It’s interesting that advertising cost are increasing.

Over here on the yahoo/bing publisher front revenues/rpc has declined by roughly 35 percent – hmmm what’s wrong with this picture? Won’t be long before we have to move the traffic somewhere else. Break even is not a good business model.

A very sad situation indeed.. It has to be intentional, Msn can’t be this stupid.

There is no one from companies large and small saying anything positive about this migration, ( unless you work for MSFT or YSM in ignorant bliss )

Advertisers are wondering where the Yahoo! traffic actually went given the well documented impression drops post merger, it might as well not be there. Yahoo PPC has been swallowed whole and Bing! its all gone.

On the publisher side the traffic partner business has become a inherently unstable platform to say the least, its been destabilising for a year or so and is now totally akin to building a business on sand. MSFT and Yahoo for all their wealth and expertise are bluntly stupid beyond comprehension.

Why is it so unstable? Well unsustainable RPC’s for starters but volatile TQ scoring is what destabilises the business, only Yahoo! seem to have convinced themselves that it grades traffic equally and accurately.

This is where they really really drop the ball and it hasn’t even bounced once because who seriously would develop new business around such a system, a revenue stream that you can’t depend on or control? In short your feeds are the business and they are not secure in the slightest, this is particularly true for smaller companies.

The Looksmart’s, Infospaces of this world and larger partners can perhaps ride this out, sit on the fence and see how the dust settles, they have been doing this for years and can adapt to new business models. For others with less reach its a business environment with seriously creaking foundations.

So either some stability returns to RPC levels and scoring or I see an awful lot of Yahoo! partners moving away. If so you have to ask is this a consequence of design by dark forces in the boardroom, perhaps they should let those that sit further down the ladder in on the secret. Or is this emerging landscape the consequence of unbelievable stupidity? Go figure.