If it's getting $26 ecpms, why aren't you buying assloads of adsense traffic for it? If you have good retention, surely you can buy customers for less than you make off of them. If each customer averages only $100 pageviews that's still $2.60 a pop.
I'm not sure if what you have described would work for my particular site, I think id need an actual product rather than just articles and content, otherwise it's a bit of a gray area?