A few days ago I stopped using YSM to promote my website. Since then, I've noticed a huge drop in my PPC from AdSense. Huge as in, it went from an average of $0.40-0.50 to $0.10-$0.20 a click. Ive looked through all my stats and everything is pretty much in line, same ads are being displayed and everything. Clicks and Page views are less, but thats because YSM provided maybe 1/4 of my traffic, but CTR is on average the same as before i stopped using YSM. Now the only conclusion I can draw is that Google pays better when the traffic comes from Yahoo? Anybody else notice similar things?
Ignoring the second comment, there are a few things that could have been happening. A couple major advertisers may have dropped out of your niche or ended an advertising campaign, bringing down the overall per click price. You also may have been smart-priced. The one possible explanation that would not involve a timing coincidence is that the Yahoo traffic may have been more targetted for the ads, and they may have been more likely to buy something through those ads than non-Yahoo traffic, which would cause your per click average to drop when you lost those Yahoo visitors.
might be smart priced, but I thought that usually meant $0.05 or less per click? the same ads are being displayed as before, unless they lowered their bids, in which case I'd expect different ads to be showing up.