AdSense Ads in Forums, yes or no?

Allowed or not?

[fearlessrick]

I keep reading that people are getting booted possibly for having Adsense ads in forums. I have a forum, and I have adsense in the header, which is automatically presented by the script.

Is this a violation or am I OK?

The only relevant info I get from G on this is under their program policies:

>>>>
Client Software

A site or third party cannot display our ads, search box, or search results as a result of the actions of any software application such as a toolbar. No Google ad or search box code may be pasted into any software application. We may not accept sites that are associated with some types of client-side software or offer these types of client-side software.
<<<<

Is my forum, which is in reality is very robust and well-written Perl script, software? Should I be concerned?

Any and all relavant answers appreciated.

[lammert]

You are OK. PHP is server side software, not client side.

Forums have the problem that they have returning visitors. Therefore the chance is higher that clicks originate from just a small set of IP addresses than with other website types. Some forum owners only show ads for unregistered visitors and visitors comming directly from a search engine.

[robsynnott]

The bit about software in the TOS is an oddity; although strictly speaking, anything fancier than plain HTML could be considered software, they seem to consider that it means desktop software; they've confirmed a number of times that various flavours of web apps are allowed.

[robsynnott]

Ah, silly me, it says client-side software. Tho I don't think it did originally...

[skunker]

With the amount of people with forums and adsense getting their accounts canceled, I wouldn't do it.

[moneyraker]

In my case it was never worth the effort anyway. When I started showing ads in my forums the CTR went down, and so did my EPC (I don't know if and how they are correlated). I thought it was just coincidence, but when I removed the ads from the forums the earnings shot up again. Needless to say, the ads never went back to my forums.

[hyperkik]

Using channels, I have found that forum ads don't perform as strongly as other ads, but at least in my case don't affect CPM, CTR, or any other relevant statistic for ads on other pages or sites.

[vistasoul]

I've had my ads on my forums since I signed up for Adsense which was in 2003... infact when I signed up... my site was JUST A FORUM.

And from checking my stats... most of my clicks come from the forums since the ads ALWAYS show whatever the thread topic is about.. my visitors like that.

Maybe it works on my forum since my forum relates to a certain subject.

[edited by: vistasoul at 8:08 pm (utc) on Mar. 26, 2005]

[petra]

Same here. Mine is a specialty forum were people ask questions and get answers on a service that costs £1000/customer, the forums are the best place to advetise for adwords customers in my field.