It's knocked it down for me.

I pointed out awhile back that Google removed the CTR stat from the home page of the Adsense interface. It's not like they removed it from the system but perhaps removing it from the main report was done because the stat is being wildly misreported due to "click bombs'" and other takebacks generated by filters that don't seem to clean up after themselves completely. By removing that stat from the primary view, it's like they're saying, don't concentrate on this number right now. Also note that number of clicks does not show on the main report either. The message seems to be "just pay attention to the earnings" which for some is bouncing around enough to be maddening in its own right. Who needs more bad numbers they can't rely on to exacerbate the maddening effect. Google seems to be downplaying the issue by removing some of these bouncing number from the first page you see when you log in to Adsense. It's just an observation for what it's worth.

Not being able to see the CTR is one of the reasons I am not using the new interface. Maybe I'll switch over since, as you say, I won't see as many bad numbers.

Honestly I've gotten to where I don't even pay attention to CTR anymore. Just what goes into the bank.

Do you mean to say that if the ctr goes down they'll make it up with a higher cpm?
I mean obviously if your ctr goes down the money in the bank we'll also.

Well not necessarily, because fortunately my EPC and my traffic keep going up (plus I keep adding more sites)

Honestly I've gotten to where I don't even pay attention to CTR anymore. Just what goes into the bank.

That's 100% the situation I'm in now. None of the stats mean anything at all except what ends up in the bank account.

The truth is that the stats were always a bonus (or maybe manipulation who knows) from G, no other company provided the same level of information. Around a third of my earnings come from (jeeeees, my mind must be going, can't remember their name now!) and they provide only very basic day end stats and then the whole lot is subject to a month end alteration. It's always been like that and I just accept it - when the money ends up in my account that's what I earnt the previous month.

Now its the same with G. C'est la vie.

CTR is helpful for identifying under performing ad slots (or the opposite) but even that is subject to the quality of ads being served. Beyond using the measurement to evaluate ad slots, I pretty much give it cursory attention at best. I'm much more interested, for example, in revenue per unique viewer. It's far more related to what shows up in my bamk account. If you're watching CTR on a unit that has been there for years and you haven't really changed anything, it's going to fluctuate naturally because of seasonal situations, time of the month or where we're at in the advertising spend cycle, what advertisers are dominating the ad space and the relevancy of ads being served. I can feel all of those things in the earnings per visitor numbers though too so don't rely on CTR unless I'm troubleshooting a new ad unit implementation.