Forum Advertisements

[Scott]

Do you have ads on your forum? If so, how many, how big and do you think they are worth it? This obviously changes from the point of view of board owner or board visitor. As an owner, ads are used to make the money to pay the bills...Google Adsense is an excellent tool to get that little bit of cash flowing in. However, as a visitor I would rather not see ads...they get in the way and I'm unlikely to click on them anyway.

Popup ads are generally the worst IMO (although most are blocked these days). 728px flash banners just don't add much to the feel of the community as far as I can see and I would never use either of these on my forum. Perhaps others will disagree.

I'd be interested if anyone new of any communities which has nice use of ads without overuse.

This is probably something which everyone has a different opinion on, I'll be interested to see what points are made. :D

(I Thought this was the best place to put this topic, but I'm wondering if the forum above would've been better?)

[Tyler]

(I Thought this was the best place to put this topic, but I'm wondering if the forum above would've been better?)

Probably a better home :)

[adb22791]

I am very careful about the ad's that go on my forums and websites. I never use popup ads, becuase I cannot stand those! Also, I do not use ad's that blink or have any of those annoying flash games. All of my ads are static gif's or slowly animated gif's (maybe some text animation, but no rapid blinking! I want people to enjoy my site, not have seizures!).
I will also not put up an ad larger than 468px by 60px. I feel that anything larger than that is intrusive, and on my current designs wouldn't look good anyway.

I am trying to get more advertisers set up, and get my juggler on all my pages for my forums. Although I know some don't like ads, I believe ads are neccessary for sites that need the money.

[cyberturk]

i am using google adsense but not for earnings. :) It helps my site to get google spiders easily for indexing. And my page ranks are increasing fastly with these. :)

[Veus]

Well placed ads can make the website look better,(e.g WHT). It probably is to do with the fact that they have become a common place amongst the community that the forums would look strange without them.

There is a very fine balance between having ads and having too many ads. The key is to finding the balance.

I usually stick with 468x60 banners as they look the best against most of my forum designs.

[spechackers]

google ads, and i donot use flash coz it is annoying and makes pages load slow

[linux-tech]

Google ads all the way, for those that aren't ad free members.
I actually have VB setup to show ads every 5 posts or so, which may be a bit much, but it's not too terribly bad ;)

[PHPGeek2k3]

Google ads all the way, for those that aren't ad free members.
I actually have VB setup to show ads every 5 posts or so, which may be a bit much, but it's not too terribly bad ;)

how has this worked for you. Something im thinking about implementing is banner ads in the footer and header of the page and text ads between every x post(s) on a thread.

Thanks
- James

[John D]

I think it depends on the type of forum too...

There's some sites I would put less ads on than others.

On a gambling forum for example there are generally more ads than others.

[SoftDux]

What banner ad management script do you use? I'm currently using phpAdsNew, but find that there's too much manual work involved when I want to add clients & banners

[vtabletop]

I don't mind google adsense banners at the bottom and top of the page .Even the ads on the sidebars are unobtrusive;In fact I remember having clicked on some adsense ads on a few popular forums but the banners in between the posts sometimes bother me.I feel popups are a waste.I ,personally, don't like a pop up slap when I am browsing or posting in a forum.Pop unders could work as they don't interfere with our browsing and are only seen once we are through with the site.

[beamup]

Google Ads are the best to advertise..... and more over ads makes site informative so I choose to get the advertisements in the site