January was an abysmal income month with revenue down 50% from 2011 average levels. February is seeing my ad income plummet even further to a fraction of what it was. I have had a steady 4 figure income per month from ADsense for several years.
In trying to figure out what is happening via the stats, I'm finding a very bizarre situation I cannot explain.
A 720x90 ad on the bottom of a page is generating 100,000+ page views per day as is typical. HOWEVER, the 720X90 banner ad at the top of the exact same page is only generating a 10th of the page views, i.e. about 10-15K per day. This is unusual in that for years these two ads *on the same page* have always generated more page views for the top banner ad with a slightly fewer number for the bottom page ad. This is now completely reversed. Further, when I looked at the performance reports for yesterday, the bottom ad had 138K page views and the top ad had 38 (THIRTY EIGHT). I'm seeing the exact same thing today....currently 13K page views for the bottom page ad and literally single digit page view numbers for all other ads, including the top banner ad on the same page as the one getting far more.
What the HELL is happening and how do I fix this?
I may be out in left field here but the decline of my site's income started a week after my reporting on Google Adsense Help Forum possible malware in a Google Adsense ad. I was the first to report a problem but not the only one. Unlike the Curve malware ad in Adsense in 2010, we never could identify which ad it was and if it was malware in a Google third party network ad, Google isn't admitting to it.
