ads placement in forum

hey guys... check out one of my site... www.sammicheng.popz.tv

my ctr is really low.. as in less than 1% ... any ideas to share? or suggestions?

would really love to know best placement for forums...

thanks !!

cheers,
vincent

 

I think CTR in forums is generally pretty low. Maybe changing the link color of the ads to green would help make them look less like ads and more like part of the site.

 

try using a leaderboard instead of a rectangle and place it right above the posts.

 

Forum CTR are pants and very few get good ones but a forum is all about keeping members not loosing them to ads straight away

There are many hacks to place the ads under the first post ect

Must say people read left to right and with your ads way over to the right then It did not stand out to me

Just depends whether you want your site to revolve around the ads ( better CTR ) or they are just an add on for the surfer

Hope this makes sense and if anyone has the golden egg for forums with out loosing all your new guests then I would love to hear

Time for a cold one

 

I get about a 1.5-1.7% CTR on my photography forum - maybe it would give you some ideas?

 

Forums are trick since the content tends to fluctuate a lot. If you have a final fantasy forum and someone mentions 'swords' you may get a bunch of crappy ebay listing for antique swords.

 

With forums your users will eventually develop somthing callled ad-blindness, so keep on moving them around. If you use phpbb and use eXtreme styles MOD, like the examples given I have written a short tutorial on how to get ads after first post or ads after first cat. on a phpbb board.

The tutorial is here: http://phpbbstyles.com/viewtopic.php?t=5683 Remember it does need eXtreme styles MOD for it to work. Also whilst on www.phpbbstyles.com look at some of the intergration there, it looks like it works well.

I just digged out an old post I made about adsense and forums; http://www.gregontheweb.co.uk/adsense-and-forums-placement-is-everything/

Hope that helps,
Greg

 

i've tried before putting ads on 3rd post and 7th post...

the ctr was extremely low.. like 0.1 or something..
hehe

 

Try adding the Google Text Links to your menu like I have here: http://www.photographycorner.com/photography-resources.php & http://www.photographycorner.com/photography-articles.php - I get over 5% CTR with that (not exactly a forum, but it is integrated into a phpbb board. )

 

Maybe you would get more on topic ads if you didnt make people sign up to read posts. The way it is now Adsense cant read the posts...

 

Place the large rectangle left from the text so that it is in the middle. Perhaps you should change the text link color to a green or a different kind of blue or any other color that harmonizes with your webs color.

 

I think it should be done with exactly the same style sheets as the page its on

 

Hey bassman, that's some forum! I'm trying to get better results on mine, I took $58 last month and will be 30% up on that this month.

How much traffic do you get, if you don't mind me asking? I'm getting about 1,800 page views per day, with 250-300 visitors.

 

Thanks. I get about 25,000 pageviews/day with 1,500-2,000 visitors...

 

Wow that's good. How long have you been using adsense on that site? This is only my 3rd (serious) month, so hopefully great things are yet to come!

 

The site has been up for about 15 months, been using Adsense in various forms for about a year or so, though I've switched placement several times before settling (for now) on what I have now. When it started out, I was doing $30/month or so, now I'm doing that some days.