martinibuster - 6:27 am on Sep 2, 2006 (gmt 0)

The Failure of AdSense on Forums
This has to rank as one of the AdSense Program's least successful aspects. I ask you, when was the last time Google showcased a forum as an AdSense Case Study [google.com]?

There are no AdSense Case Studies for a Forum
AdSense has never showcased a pure forum. However, they did do a case study for a hybrid site that included a forum. You can read about this hybrid forum/article/ecommerce/blog's AdSense Case Study [google.com] for a article/blog/e-commerce/forum site for yourself. The interesting thing to note is that for each section of the site the owner mentions that their revenues or clicks rose three to ten times. But this is what they say about their forum section:

Another place Woot visitors go is the community forum. The site has a very outspoken following of deal-seeking visitors who chime in with product and pricing evaluations, comments about the overall Woot experience and plenty of non-Woot banter. Rutledge followed the six optimization tips for forums he read about on the Inside AdSense blog to improve his ad performance.

The Silence Speaks for Itself?
There is nothing there about the results. They make no claims for success. For every other section of that site they end the paragraph with a testimonial of how well AdSense performed. The forum section is the only one that has no such endorsement. Why is that?

Forums Often Rank Well... So where's the Money?
Forums generally rank exceptionally well across all search engines. But when you count up the revenue from a traditional HOW TO Content Site versus the income from a HOW TO Forum Site, the forum's revenue earning ability lags.

The OP's dilemma is a good case in point. They have a regular content side and a forum side. Both ostensibly have the same kind of content, but the regular content site does better.

Why should that be?

• Is there something inherent with Forum Software that causes bad targeting?
• Are forum non-registered forum lurkers seeking answers less likely to click ads than those seeking guidance from an article?
• Does the "discussion" format inhibit clicks because there is no clear voice of authority?
• Is there a flaw in keyword targeting on the AdSense side? For instance, is AdSense using search query keywords to show ads forumwide, resulting in irrelevant ads?
  
• Are forum members not using sufficient keywords in their titles and posts, resulting in mis-targeted ads?