The traditional arrangement between the people who have content and the people who have traffic is based on: 1) "I'll let you use my content if you'll use it to send me traffic..." and 2) "I'll send you traffic, if you give me content..."

The context within which this power struggle plays out is predominantly the TGP/Free Site, and the common traffic-to-value mechanism is the hosted gallery. Where the line is drawn right now, the sponsor/content license-holder provides hosting/bandwidth and marketing use access to the affiliate. This permission to use, however, comes with the requirement that the affiliate not "use" the content provided by the sponsor to promote any other. The sponsor, who hosts and controls the gallery template and the click-stream thereafter, is free to expose the traffic to a number of "secondary" monetization opportunities, before, during and after making the offer to which the affiliate sent his traffic.

My question: Is the commodity value of content still so high that sponsors should preserve the right to dictate exclusive use? It's a matter of universal acknowledgement that very few sponsors can afford to buy traffic profitably on the strength of conversions from just their own offers. It makes me wonder whether senders of traffic may be unreasonbaly constrained, given factors in the current marketplace. There is a class of traffic sender, who is not so much "source" as "middleman" or broker between true traffic sources and destinations. They exist on whatever margin they can carve from what is already a "cut" of profit, and I think have been having a tougher time making a buck of late than previously. And, on the other side of the fence, the folks who operate sites whose revenue basis is "advertising" must wonder what the hell is happening in Adult, that our CPM-equivalent traffic-buy offers are SHRINKING, when everywhere else on the Internet, they are going up.

This trend concerns me. If we hold on to a macro-model for our business in which the value of content is inflating, we're going to find ourselves unable to buy traffic in the grander Web marketplace -- very soon. To make matters worse, 2257 Effects will increase the scarcity (and upward price pressure) of content even more. Thoughts?

 2HP