OK, So I started a vbulletin forum a little over a year ago. Since then we have grown tremendously, we currently average around 14,000 page views a day. The site is generating good ad revenue, but the ctr is 0.0x%! Its super low! I've been doing research lately and people say the average is around 1% even for low sites. If I could get to that it would be an almost 10x increase. I am wondering what I am doing wrong. Currently I have a 728x60 Banner under the main navbar that shows to all users. The only other ad I have is a 250x250 ad in the first post for guests only. I don't want to spam my members that much, I would much rather prefer showing ads to guests. But if there are ad placements which are very good and would help me increase my ctr a lot, I would show it to all members. I read somewhere that a left side bar ad unit is good, and was looking for a vbulletin mod somewhere to do that, but couldn't. Thanks for the help. P.S If anyone would like my URL to see the site and possibly help me out, feel free to PM me.
Forums normally have a lower CTR then websites since loyal members won't click that often but they will increase the page impressions so your CTR will go down.
You can get templates with the tall skyscraper banner down the left, but when I searched for them I could not find a free one, only $49 ones. Secondly if you have a forum that is doing 3% you would be doing well, 2% would be good, and the norm around 0.5-1%. You are unlikely to ever make a fortune from adsense on a forum as they have notoriously bad CTR's. When it comes to making money, then you have to decide if you want to make money by showing ads to your members by showing them ads, or just run a nice forum. If it is the latter then don't come on here complaining your CTR is low when you are not showing ads to everyone visiting your site. your members really won't mind if the forum content is good and well managed, they will come back regardless of ads. We do here after all don't we
Are you analysing the performance of each ad units? If so you may know what is the CTR of the 728x90 which is probably VERY low. The fact that it is NOT a good ad size (not the best anyway) and that you're showing it to members (who refresh and refresh and never click) makes your overall CTR very low. The problem also is that for the ad showing to guest, it is second in html source code, so you get less paying ads in this ad unit, the best paying ads being in the 728x90 ad unit which is probably not clicked a lot even by guests.. You only know the exact performances of your ad units and you should consider not showing any ad to members, or make a special ad unit only displaying to members so you can analyse the clicks from members only before taking a decision.
Read this thread, you will beed to be a member to be be able to see the code intergration. You can run 3 x google adverts on one forum page, so space them out between posts. Inbox me for more info if you need it. http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=194817&highlight=adsense+multiple+posts&page=4