“Anyone who isn’t prepared for ads to go down 40 percent is crazy.” That's what Valleywag publisher Nick Denton blabbed to the wantrepreneurs at an event in New York last week. AllThingsD reblogger Peter Kafka rolled up Denton's irrational gloom into a big-picture gloom post this morning. There's some good news buried in the middle of Kafka's post:

Ad network optimizer The Rubicon Project reports that the average price for an online ad at “thousands of sites and 270 ad networks” dropped 11 percent in the last quarter. But since it can also find evidence of prices increasing at some sites — news and reference sites, for instance, increased prices 36 percent — Rubicon argues that things aren’t so bad after all.