I'm interested in offering cash prizes to tournament winners at my forum's arcade. Would this incentive be a violation of Google's TOS? It is only going to the winners, but it will definitely encourage game play. I'm also interested in doing paid to post with 100 post totaling $1.00 U.S. I've seen several forums do this and these forums are also monetized with Adsense. Isn't this type of incentive a violation?
It will be a violation, only if it encourages the visitors to click on google ads. Otherwise, google should not be botherd about ehat you do at your site!
Offering incentives for people to visit your site isn't againt adsense TOS, It's basically what all sites do. We all do things and offer things as a way of encouraging people to visit our sites and join our forums.
A violation other than encouraging clicks is to have another PPC agent's ads on your site You can get multiple revenue streams (in addition to adsense) by adding affiliate products and pay per lead ads.