What SHOULD happen, IMO:
Smart companies will thin their employee list and focus on traffic that's already there, not spend $10's of thousands a show entertaining people who probably won't send a sale a month to their program (yeah, yeah, one of them might turn out to be really big - well, if they do then they're smart and they're going to do it w/o having to be entertained when they know they're a little fish).
More focus on support and creation of new sites/niches
What will also probably happen:
More and more of the small sites will be bought out or go away.
More people will focus on mainstream. The big guys will find someone else to run adult for them. Big problem to me since no one will be as tight with YOUR money except you, but it's going to happen. Most of the large program owners are almost invisable - this will become more the norm. Why work your ass off when you can spend your money?
I wouldn't be surprised to see at least one or two mergers between large programs.