Hey All, I have been running a forum for the past year. Admittedly, the click thru rate is a bit low but that is to be expected (b/c its a forum). I'm getting ready to release a new version of the forum so I am thinking about changing the ad placement. Currently I have a 728 leaderboard accross the very top of the forum and a 728 leaderboard that shows up after the first post when a user views a topic. The inline ad gets hardly any clicks and the top leaderboard gets a few. I'm thinking about switching to 2 120x600 skyscrapers on the right of the forum. Has anyone played around with ad placements on their forum? What worked best for you?
Did to try changing colors...my CTR improved dramatically after I started using contrasting colors for title of ads...instead of perfect blending. Leaderboard works best for me.
Since there are so many returning visitors in forums, I would suggest atleast changing your ad placement / colors from time to time so they're not "ad blinded" from them.
One can also use multiple colors from within the code itself. Very few people actually use it, but changing colors can attract users. You can observe that on DP itself...the color of ads in the top banner keep changing. It just needs a slight modification in the Adsense code...it would look something like this: google_color_link = ["941001","1F7F47","1530AF"] Code (markup):
I would suggest having images and text ads rotating.. image ones can work may attract people's attention because your forum is probably text dominant correct?