I work in an industry with very few good content providers running AdSense, and the CTRs for content clicks are really bad (.1%, .2% CTR)--although for all I know those are normal rates for AdSense. I have this experience with multiple products and sites using AdWords so I don't think it's just my poor copywriting skills--my search CTR's are really very good.
I'm not worried about fraud with these abominable rates. But content displays outstrip my search displays by 5-1. If I turn off the content advertising, will it affect the number of impressions I get from search?
This has no effect. I would advise you to measure conversions and then decide what to do with content. The low CTR's are not important as they do not influence the rest of your campaign. If the clicks convert fine, if they don't switch it off.
So now of course they are disabled.
