I've been running with adsense and for entertainment I did something funny to see what they would do. I don't track the clicks hitting my adsense. I just trust googles count. Well, two days ago I replaced a banner with an affiliate. The affiliate banner(s) record about 175 clicks a day more than the adsense banner(which was about 25/day). I double checked the traffic and everything. The banners all look the same as well so it's nothing special to look at for my visitors either. Sneeky google!
Sneaky or not, they're the best paying company and even if another company shows you more clicks I'm sure their overall revenue is lower than what AdSense will provide.
An affiliate banner may display in every single country, for every single visitor - While Google might not do that. Is allot of your traffic foreign? Google might not be displaying ads to some of your visitors for certain reasons. With that much of a difference, you're probably best to run with the affiliate ads for a while. I don't care what anyone tells you, Google is definitely not always the best solution!
I don't get a lot of foreign traffic. It's mostly uk, us, and ca. I'm thinking google does rip off some clicks here and there but 170 per day is a little much. I've owned the site for years and never challenged the adsense banners I've had on there. This is making me think twice. Of course none of this matters if there is no profit from the CJ affiliate.
Google's Adsense program is highly customizable on the advertisers end. They can include/exclude certain keywords, territories, devices, etc. Google also does a good job by blocking fraudulent conversions and repeated clicks. Most affiliate programs are 100% displayed to every one. I am not surprised of your results. With that said...you will probably earn more money with Adsense......until you are terminated for whatever unknown reason. I use to laugh at people on here complaining about being terminated from adsense for "no reason" until it happened to my account. I probably generated over $40k from adsense and owned my account for years and it was terminated and I couldn't even contact google because my publisher id was not active. And to add...I used my same login for Adwords when I was advertising Dealership Special Finance sites. I spent well over $250k with Adwords. According to Google I am safe to spend money with them just not make any. So.....Adsense is great to make money but terrible to depend on.
Here's another thing. The daily earning are all WONKY now. It'll say $234 today so far when I should be at like $8. Then two hours later it's normal, then back to WONKY again. This has to be a coincidence though. There is no way adsense actives some stupid get you eager with tips and wonky earnings to get you back.