If you ask me Adsense is going to keep doing crap like this and people will stop using them all together. I'm already considering dropping Adsense and going with Clickbank ads. You can change the format and colors of the ads just like Adsense and you can make a hell of a lot more per sale through Clickbank.
On my primary keyword that I used to get $1.20 - $3.00 per click now I'm getting $0.35 to $0.60 Google most definitely priced higher CTR lower and lower CTR higher. I notice that when I get lower than 3% CRT the CPC increases and when I get it above 5% it decreases with about 50%. Well, that's bad news for me... Venetsian
When the economic hardships are over and advertising are spending more, then we should see an increase per click again.
not only adsense ... everything is going less ... even site traffic and other things of web business ...
Actually for may just noticed my pay per click rate has skyrocketed. Anyone else? January through april were pretty close to last year payouts. The difference im seeing is a slow decline in click through rate. That seems to be the biggest difference for me since the economy went south.