On the face of it, it seems to me Google have charged advertisers exactly the same as they would normally (in the good times) for typical terms. Then to keep their profits up / shareholders happy they've just been decreasing the cut to the publishers and aggregators signifigantly, then the latter do the same to make up for their smaller cut from Google and there you go, 40 to 50% decrease in ppc revenue. I mean why wouldn't they, they've got the perfect smoke screen, eg. recession, weak currencies etc. Meanwhile the advertiser is paying the same as they always did and the domain owner gets reamed.