Is Google Replacing Affiliates With Big Brand Spenders?

Google's search for utmost relevancy is hitting affiliate marketers hard, who are noticing their best converters diminishing as keyword prices raise. Relevancy has been the company's buzzword, but critics say it's more about the Almighty Coin (pr. Kwan).

Anyone else seen this and why would this be when everything is relevant? BTW I don't use analytics or anything else to allow any tracking of conversions from their side, but I can tell you the kw's that got bumped up high were converting.

A number of affiliate marketers echoed "eljefe3," relaying their own troubles.

"Pexcornel" writes:

My account had 700 groups with some 5000 keywords on a 1300$/month budget.
Only the best converting keywords are disabled. From 0.26-0.30 to 10$

And that type of complaint goes on for eight pages. So what's happening?
Comments on these developments are welcome (and encouraged) below. Has the latest Google quality score update sent you digging for money to keep up with the big boys? Are you going to be able to?