Should I remove AdSense from my Forums?

[wfernley]

I have a website that has a forums but also has several other pages. I have noticed that having AdSense on forums decreases CTR. Would my earnings increase if I was to remove AdSense from my forum pages but it keep it on the rest of my site?

Can anyone give me more information regarding this?

Thanks :D

Wes

[petra]

Yes remove it and drive targetted traffic from the forum towards your content pages where the ads should be placed in a prominent position.

[Ricky_G]

An idea for you. Force your users to use GOOGLE SEARCH to search in your forums. And display ads there. Maybe this will help a bit.

If this doesnt works, remove it! Adsense on forums is a fail! MAN! Remove it. Device ways to earn from you forum the other way.

Maybe driving traffic to other content pages of yours or something.

[wfernley]

May I ask why I should remove it from my forums?

Displaying it on more pages will increase my clicks but lower my CTR. how will this help my AdSense revenue?

Thanks for your replies :D

[StuntasticAudi]

I don't think you should remove it. Who cares about your CTR rating. It's about making money. My CTR is so freaken low but I don't care because I still pull $100 a day from that site because of so many visitors and clicks.

[wfernley]

The reason I ask this is because I have heard that higher CPC ads appear if you have a higher CTR. I would like to confirm this though. Does anyone know the answer to this one?

[krod]

Try using YPN! on your forums, I use adsense on my content pages, and YPN on my forums. The strange thing is, YPN almost out performs google even with a CTR of less then 1%.

[trillianjedi]

Adsense on forums is a fail!

I've found that it depends on where you put the ads and deal with ad blindness from the regulars. And ensuring that you help mediabot with it's targetting.

I use AdSense on several forums succesfully.

TJ

[wfernley]

Unfortunately, I cannot use Yahoo. I am located in Canada and Yahoo only allows publishers in the US.

Are there any other ad types out there I should try?

[M_B_Walker]

I have had good success with removing Adsense ads from my bulletin board for regular visitors (i.e., those who log in to the board), but leaving the ads for people who don't log in. This actually resulted in higher earnings than when I had ads for all people viewing the board, even though clicks were down. It also avoided complaints from regular board visitors, who didn't really like the ads.

[ernestpr]

I would recommend removing Adsense from the forums but then use some other ads like YPN there. In this way your forum CTR won't affect your google revenue.

[JoaquinG]

My CTR in forums is higher than in normal content pages.

Half of my revenues are from forums.

[petra]

Then you should work on creating more compelling content pages, long-term, you will make more money there.

[Mistra]

Why Webmaster World is not displaying Adsense? :D

[wfernley]

I will try removing AdSense from users who are logged in. But keep it up for users who are not logged in.

What are the hotspots of forums? Currently I have an ad at the top and one at the bottom of the page.

[trillianjedi]

What are the hotspots of forums?

Mileage will vary depending on the forum, but for me (in order of CTR):-

1. Right underneath the first post.
2. Right at the bottom of the thread, just next to the "Page 2" or "Reply" buttons.
3. Skyscraper running parallel to the forum either left or right hand side.

Rotating colour schemes works well. You can do this from within your AS code, eg:-

google_color_link = ["FF5EA8","A899FF"];

... will make google serve you up ads alternating those two colours. You can do this with every colour option in the AS code.

And for logged-in users, don't show ads all the time - mix it up. That helps with ad blindness.

If you want to take that a step further, try rotating ads with either your own content/link blocks or images in the space where the ads usually are. I ran some experiments on this with a small site last year and reported here:-

[webmasterworld.com...]

TJ

[wfernley]

Thanks for the info trillianjedi. I will try changing around my ads in the forums :)

[ndaru]

Would my earnings increase if I was to remove AdSense from my forum pages but it keep it on the rest of my site?

From time to time, I pulled Adsense ads from my high impression but low CTR pages, which resulted in higher overall CTR.

After that, somehow my EPC always increased. At the end, I always earned more than before I pulled the ads. (Why?)

[JLSeagull]

Does Livejournal and rottentomatoes allow Google Adsense to its communities/journals?