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Best Google Adsense Placement and Optimization Within vBulletin Forums
On other webmaster and community building forums I visit I always seem to see a lot of questions pop up regarding the best adsense placement for those with vBulletin forums. I'm a big believer in doing something clean and making sure it is as perfect and optimized as you can get it. This is very important with a revenue source such as Adsense and YPN since you get paid on a per click basis. This means you want to have an ad above the fold and presented in such a way that it will draw attention to it. I am a big believer in blending the ads in to the background of the forum. I would also like to touch on other possible ways to get the most money out of your other advertising networks such as CPM and CPA ads.
I will list the ad placements that I have found to work the best for me and then show you how to set them up.
Ad Placement: Under Navbar
This ad placement has given me the highest CTR by far of any other placement on my forum. What I use here is a 336x280 block ad underneath the Navbar. I use Text Ads only as it offers the highest chance of a click than one image ad will. Next to that 336x280 block I run a 336x280 dynamic CPM block. This insures that I will make some money off that visitor whether or not he clicks on my adsense ad or not. This also helps to fill in the white space that you will have if you just have the single Google Ad under the navbar. If you don't have access to a CPM network you can always sign up for a CPA type advertiser such as those listed here: Monetizing vBulletin Forums and then use a 336x280 or 300x250 image ad to place next to your Google Ad. Some people even use a Google Image ad next to the Text only ad. The only problem is that if there is no image ad to show you will get white space unless you specify another ad.
An example of how this looks on my site:
googleblockadsmall.jpg
I get a very consistent high ctr with this setup. The Block ads are also the highest paying ad blocks Google offers.
You may think the ads are too big but the great thing is that my research has shown that Members are blind to Adsense ads and that the ones that do click are usually the ones clicking to "help you out" and in the end could get you banned from Google or at the very least that person's ip banned from adsense all together from registering legitimate clicks within adsense. If you login to my forum as a regular registered member you get a different view.
This is what my regular members see:
regularmemberadsmall.jpg
A very small leaderboard that takes up very little room in height and fits in well with the flow of the style. This ad is a CPM ad meaning my members do not have to click on ads to earn me money they simply have to browse around, post and create new content for me
.
If the members wish to further support my site they can become Supporting Members for 19.95 every 6 months which gives them access to lots of new things and gives them a complate ad free browsing experience on the forums. All of this is possible with http://forum.vbulletinsetup.com/f66/...list-2185.html .
Ad Placement: vBulletin Archive
The vBulletin Archive in default forum is very plain and stripped down and has shown that it will out rank your original threads frequently in search engines. This means that those visitors are first hitting your archive pages for the information they searched for. Search engine referrals for threads have an extremely high exit rate since most people are looking for some kind of answer or bit of information. This means that the chances of them clicking to view the original thread are very slim which in effect cuts down on the chances of you generating revenue as they will never get to your ad! Even if you do not have the archive turned on such as you are using
VBSEO and redirecting your threads to the original (which I highly recommend, more on that here: vBSEO Optimization Tips you can still make decent money within your archive on just the main and forumdisplay pages.
I use a 728x90 CPM ad and a 336x280 Block adsense ad within my archive. You can see the setup here:
archiveadssmall.jpg
I get an extremely high ctr on here plus get the benefit of running a CPM ad above it without it effecting my adsense earnings.
Those are the only two places that I use Adsense on my site. I have found that any other place just doesn't perform well enough to warrant keeping it there. For example the 728x90 leaderboard that I have after the first post on every thread page performs better as a CPM than as a adsense ad. On top of that I am a big believer of spreading your income out into other areas. If adsense starts performing poorly for whatever reason or something happens and your account is banned you don't want to be left with no revenue income.
If you have any questions or have input on ad locations that you have found to work well for you feel free to post them!
I will list the ad placements that I have found to work the best for me and then show you how to set them up.
Ad Placement: Under Navbar
This ad placement has given me the highest CTR by far of any other placement on my forum. What I use here is a 336x280 block ad underneath the Navbar. I use Text Ads only as it offers the highest chance of a click than one image ad will. Next to that 336x280 block I run a 336x280 dynamic CPM block. This insures that I will make some money off that visitor whether or not he clicks on my adsense ad or not. This also helps to fill in the white space that you will have if you just have the single Google Ad under the navbar. If you don't have access to a CPM network you can always sign up for a CPA type advertiser such as those listed here: Monetizing vBulletin Forums and then use a 336x280 or 300x250 image ad to place next to your Google Ad. Some people even use a Google Image ad next to the Text only ad. The only problem is that if there is no image ad to show you will get white space unless you specify another ad.
An example of how this looks on my site:
googleblockadsmall.jpg
I get a very consistent high ctr with this setup. The Block ads are also the highest paying ad blocks Google offers.
You may think the ads are too big but the great thing is that my research has shown that Members are blind to Adsense ads and that the ones that do click are usually the ones clicking to "help you out" and in the end could get you banned from Google or at the very least that person's ip banned from adsense all together from registering legitimate clicks within adsense. If you login to my forum as a regular registered member you get a different view.
This is what my regular members see:
regularmemberadsmall.jpg
A very small leaderboard that takes up very little room in height and fits in well with the flow of the style. This ad is a CPM ad meaning my members do not have to click on ads to earn me money they simply have to browse around, post and create new content for me
.If the members wish to further support my site they can become Supporting Members for 19.95 every 6 months which gives them access to lots of new things and gives them a complate ad free browsing experience on the forums. All of this is possible with http://forum.vbulletinsetup.com/f66/...list-2185.html .
Ad Placement: vBulletin Archive
The vBulletin Archive in default forum is very plain and stripped down and has shown that it will out rank your original threads frequently in search engines. This means that those visitors are first hitting your archive pages for the information they searched for. Search engine referrals for threads have an extremely high exit rate since most people are looking for some kind of answer or bit of information. This means that the chances of them clicking to view the original thread are very slim which in effect cuts down on the chances of you generating revenue as they will never get to your ad! Even if you do not have the archive turned on such as you are using
VBSEO and redirecting your threads to the original (which I highly recommend, more on that here: vBSEO Optimization Tips you can still make decent money within your archive on just the main and forumdisplay pages.
I use a 728x90 CPM ad and a 336x280 Block adsense ad within my archive. You can see the setup here:
archiveadssmall.jpg
I get an extremely high ctr on here plus get the benefit of running a CPM ad above it without it effecting my adsense earnings.
Those are the only two places that I use Adsense on my site. I have found that any other place just doesn't perform well enough to warrant keeping it there. For example the 728x90 leaderboard that I have after the first post on every thread page performs better as a CPM than as a adsense ad. On top of that I am a big believer of spreading your income out into other areas. If adsense starts performing poorly for whatever reason or something happens and your account is banned you don't want to be left with no revenue income.
If you have any questions or have input on ad locations that you have found to work well for you feel free to post them!
Last edited by Brandon; 07-13-2007 at 12:51 AM.
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