There has apparently been a downturn in clicks on Google ads in the past couple of months. Ross Fadner at Mediapost explains why this is happening. What caught my attention was this part:

" How does it do this? Firstly, by showing fewer ads per page. Why show fewer ads? Google is aiming to reduce visual clutter, which pleases both users and remaining advertisers. Second, Google is trying to weed out those bottom-feeding advertisers that consistently bid low. Low bids indicate that advertisers don't expect their ads to generate many clicks. Google wants to get rid of those so that the remaining advertisers pay more for higher quality clicks that drive more business and convert more often."

"Bottom-feeding advertisers that consistently bid low?" Come on Ross - what did they do to you? "Low bids indicate that advertisers don't expect their ads to generate many clicks?" Call me incompetent, but this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The CPC you're willing to pay is a function of how much money that traffic is worth to you. Assuming that higher relevance leads to higher quality clicks, I don't see what the correlation is between the bid level and quality of clicks.