It won't burst, but it'll get harder to make money as a publisher as the number and quality of sites displaying ads increases...
anything that has a beginning has an end, but why should we focus or spend our precious time thinking about it? it is better to concentrate on improving our income or better yet create diverse sources of income to be on the safe side.
Good comments, I agree concentrate on your own business, take note of what is going on around you, but do not let it de-focus on your targets
I wouldn't be too worried about the number of publishers swelling too much because the number of online advertisers is also increasing every year as well. So if there is fairly proportional growth on both sides of the equation it shouldn't effect things too much. I personally think that Google AdSense probably has a good couple of years left in it, if not longer. I mean it is a pretty simplistic supply and demand model where Google is just the middle man between advertisers and publishers. The only thing that even raises a couple of eyebrows is the fraud issue, which I personally don't think is a big enough issue to totally cripple the system. So essentially the program will last as long as advertisers are receiving a ROI and whilst this contextual advertising remains the best form of advertising for publishers. Obviously if publishers find a better means of advertising we will obviously move towards that but advertiser on the other hand will continue use AdSense as long as there ROI. My prediction. Slight downturn in earnings over the coming years but Google AdSense ain't going anywhere for the next 2 - 3 years.
In my opinion, AdSense will only grow, as there are countless businesses in any niche and only 10 top results on any one SERP page. What this means is that as the web grows (and it really does as Google's own index closes on 100 billion pages and will definitely keep going) attaining the top natural results will become increasingly difficult and more and more businesses will turn toward AdWords as the simpler alternative of retaining the web traffic. This in turn will pass onto AdSense. So, unless Google will say "we have enough money and we don’t want to bother with AdSense any longer" it will only grow.
That's actually quite an interesting point, but at the same time companies will still ultimately be looking for ROI, so for companies to start investing more they would probably need more return as well, which would probably require a combination of an increasing number of seraches (pretty likily that search engines will only continue to grow in popularity as more users come online) and it would also require users that are more willing to spend online (I also think this is a trend that will probably continue to grow as well).
Nobody can tell, even Google itself can't tell. But it should last for quite a long time. I guess the chances for it to change its name or company will be higher than being ended.
All our earnings are going down, so for some webmaster their earnings will be that low, that they can't afford their hosting with it. so after a while only the webmaster with unique sites or those with a very good idea will make profit out of adsense.
Thats a bit of a broad statement, my earnings have gone up weekly and I know alot of other people in the same boat. Seriously, if you cant afford a cheap (yearly) hosting package and your ad revenue doesnt cover that, you should maybe start looking elsewhere for an income.
And if worst comes to worst, off to geocities? You arent making much anyways, if you cant afford hosting