Competitive Ad filter and lesser number of Ads should help you. But the niche of your site also plays an important role in deciding the returns.
In regards to niche, my keyword has a CPC of $3.00, but I am always getting $0.07-$0.10 per click. When I first put Adsense on this site last month I would get some $0.30-$0.50 clicks, but the past month every click is very low. I have only one ad unit and have used section targeting. In comparison, to another site that only has a CPC of $1.20, the clicks for those are the same value as this niche which has a 3X less CPC. By the way, the site ranks #1 for it's keyword that has that $3.00 CPC. What can I do to improve the per click value? What are your click values compared to the CPC of your niche?
Try to create channels and track the high paying clicks , so that you can put more emphaciz on high paying keywords/pages.
you cant really. The last ad on your banner is the lowest paying ones. Maybe block a few of the those urls to see if that helps.
You might be having a low paying niche for which nothing much can be done . Competitive Ad filter will also not do the job for you it is a waste of time . My advice would be to use Google External Keyword tool and analyze your site content ( keywords ) and find out what is the most you can do to get high paying ads . The answer is using keywords that have high CPC as shown by the Google tool . Use this tool wisely Link : https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
What do you guys consider high paying CPC? $5? 7$? I think $3 CPC is not a bad paying niche, but the clicks seem very low. However, many of the clicks do seem to come from other keywords and not that one in particular. So that might be why the low click values.