crobb305 - 6:22 pm on Oct 18, 2012 (gmt 0)

Perhaps Panda and Penguin are not paying off after all, relevant results = lower incentive to click ads.

Time for a new philosophy at Google, and perhaps some new management/staff. Granted, the earnings-per-click is just part of the picture, but their war on webmasters has to end, their selfish attempts to monetize every niche with their own product offers, and weeding out the existing competition to do so, may not be paying off. Advertising budgets have taken a big hit, for those who have been spanked by Google. This may account for some of the drop in cost-per-click, via a reduction in bid prices/Adwords budgets.