Many, many Google AdSense publishers are complaining about a drop in earnings from their Google AdSense initiatives. A long and detailed thread at WebmasterWorld has a lot of complaints from publishers on the topic.
There is no question that ad dollars globally have dried up. The economy is in really bad shape and consumers are not buying, so sellers are not advertising. I can tell you from personal experience, we use to turn away advertisers left and right and now it is almost impossible to get a new advertiser here. (Hint, if you want a good price on ads here, contact us.)
I hear that many Google AdWords advertisers are slashing budgets due to the drop in sales they have experienced. With a drop in advertising budgets, that means less ads to go around in the contextual space, which results in less money for Google AdSense Publishers. There are no hard facts on this drop yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see more data come out on this soon.
Publishers, let us know if you have seen a drop in AdSense earnings in the past couple weeks or so. Take the poll below:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.