Has anyone tried to impliement section targetting on their forums? phpbb forums specifically tend to bring up phpbb-related ads, and section targetting might help reduce this. Has anyone placed around with it and seen good results?
Yes. I exclude the overallheader.tpl all the way from where it starts <body> until the end. I exclude the entire overallfooter.tpl Then I include just the postrow section for the text in viewtopic.tpl Seems to work pretty well. I can get targetted ads that are way off topic for my site just from the post text.
yup. I just tested it for fun. I have a link unit on the top of each topic.. By the time the message refreshed after I posted it I had targeted ads. It is instant for me. I have seen a few cases where ads have gone off target and then gone back and not sure why.. but it seems to work well for me.
Anyone using Invision Power Board might like to check out the forum skinning info I put together for section targeting...its a 2 minutes job...very easy http://www.adsenseforums.net/index.php?showtopic=114 cheers
Let me see if I can put something together tomorrow.. I am a bit delirious from lack of sleep right now to do it justice... And I need to check because the site I did it on was fairly modified so I don't want to make it too confusing.
I will give it a try now... might not be pretty.. but I will do it on a clean 2.017 install: open templates/subsilver/overall_header.tpl find: </head> Code (markup): add after: <!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) --> Code (markup): find: td height="25" align="center" valign="top" nowrap="nowrap"><span class="mainmenu"> <a href="{U_PROFILE}" class="mainmenu"><img src="templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_profile.gif" width="12" height="13" border="0" alt="{L_PROFILE}" hspace="3" />{L_PROFILE}</a> <a href="{U_PRIVATEMSGS}" class="mainmenu"><img src="templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_message.gif" width="12" height="13" border="0" alt="{PRIVATE_MESSAGE_INFO}" hspace="3" />{PRIVATE_MESSAGE_INFO}</a> <a href="{U_LOGIN_LOGOUT}" class="mainmenu"><img src="templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_login.gif" width="12" height="13" border="0" alt="{L_LOGIN_LOGOUT}" hspace="3" />{L_LOGIN_LOGOUT}</a> </span></td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> </table> <br /> Code (markup): add after: <!-- google_ad_section_end --> Code (markup): open templates/subsilver/overall_footer.tpl find: <div align="center"><span class="copyright"><br />{ADMIN_LINK}<br /> Code (markup): add before: <!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) --> Code (markup): find: </body> Code (markup): add before: <!-- google_ad_section_end --> Code (markup): open template/subsilver/viewtopic_body.tpl find: <!-- BEGIN postrow --> Code (markup): add after: <!-- google_ad_section_start --> Code (markup): find: <!-- END postrow --> Code (markup): add before: <!-- google_ad_section_end --> Code (markup): That should work for focusing the forum text for ads on the forum pages. If you have any problems let me know... I know it is not in standard mod form, but it will have to do for now.
Joeychgo was part of a beta test/experiment run bu Google to look at click-through rates for ads positioned in diffferent parts of forum pages. See his thread at http://www.vbwebmaster.com/forums/ -- it's for vBulletin but the results should apply to any forum.
Anyone seeing some better results? I have made the change this week and since I have made the change I got a feeling my ECPM went down half. Is anyone else experiencing this? I know it will take about two weeks to serve the right ads. It looks as soon you make a change it has a effect on your ECPM.
I have implemented the section targeting coding in my phpbb templates and since then I have noticed that my ECPM went down. I was just wondering whether this would be a coincident?
I don't know about your forum specifically but I can give you some personal feedback: I think having Google ads in more than one location, or moving around, or in the middle of the page/thread is annoying... and when I'm annoyed by ads I don't click on them and may even block them. My advice is to put them in the page header or footer and leave them there.
Well my ctr averages about 5 to 6 procent so Im quit pleased with Im just a bit more concerned about my ECPM going down after adding the adsense targeting coding. Nevertheless Im just going to give it a bit more time to see the final result. Maybe the ECPM went down half because its the end of the month.