Aaron Wall has a great post summarizing some of the recent problems in the advertising industry for publishers.

I saw this one coming, which was why I flipped my focus from selling inventory (as a publisher) to buying is (as an advertiser.) I guess I should change the name of this blog.

Many in the online advertising side have business models involving selling overpriced garbage to their customers. One of my friends recently dealt with a major US bank’s online advertising campaign. Every question he asked them — what sites are your ads being shown on, which banner ads convert the best — resulted in the answer, “we have no idea.”

Here is why you should pay attention as a publisher. If you think things are bad for you, they may be worse for ad networks and agencies you deal with. Aaron highlighted a story over at Techcrunch — “Glam blames the economy and extends payment terms from 60 or 90 to 120 days.” If I heard that from any company I dealt with, I’d assume they were at risk of going bankrupt and count on never being paid.

As I pointed out previously this is no time to close up shop. Most of the decline in ad inventory prices may be from advertisers ignoring their ROI. That means better and smarter deals on inventory for now. Are you a publisher? Great time to expand your community base through advertising. Running an ecommerce site relying on Google’s free traffic? Start learning the ins and outs of performance advertising.