Where do your most successful ads go?

[Edrondol]

I was looking at the thread Slavik made about ad locations and I was blown away at the different places they could all be. And it got me to wondering. We're all trying to make the most out of our sites without carpetbombing our users with ads or turning off potential users who may be lurking.

I'm wondering which placements work the best for you?

Personally, I only have 2 ads - ad_above_content and ad_below_content. I refuse to put ads in threads at all. Currently, I get the most clicks from the above content.

What is your experience? Oh, and this is not a discussion about Google adsense or anything like that. It's not about the ads themselves. It's about placement effectiveness for your forum.

 

[Forsaken]

I put a global one in the header, which is one of our best positions, one in the sidebar (Going to remove this one, and probably sell advertising directly for the location), one above our guides on our site (Top paying ad, especially when theres a new game release), and one in threads using Digital Points add-on which pays decently.

 

[Edrondol]

How do your users feel about ads in threads? Or have they always been there so they don't care?

 

[MattW]

1. Above top breadcrumb
2. Below first unread post
3. Below bottom breadcrumb
4. Sidebar forum home

 

[Forsaken]

How do your users feel about ads in threads? Or have they always been there so they don't care?

We haven't gotten any complaints, though it is a small site currently (Only ~200 members, most of our traffic is people searching for guides).

A lot of our users use tapatalk, which eats a lot of our ad income up ;|.

 

[melbo]

Ads in threads by far. We only serve ads to unregistered so I've never seen any complaints from my members. After years of tests, I concluded that my members were ad blind so we just stopped showing them to Registered and they stopped complaining.

turning off potential users who may be lurking.

let them know that registered members see no (or less) ads?

 

[digitalpoint]

Our most successful ad placement is by far the one that goes in a random location in the post the user is reading. But it's always a fine line between pissing users off and monetizing. For *us*, we ONLY use that ad placement for guests. A logged in user don't see it with the exception of a few obnoxious forum categories like Politics and Religion where we kind of want to annoy them into not using those areas... haha

Purple = ad in header
Orange = ad inside post
Yellow = ad under post

And again... orange is the one we use the LEAST for placement since logged in users don't normally see it.

 

[Kentarok]

What ad sizes are best?

 

[Jarod]

What ad sizes are best?

Hello,

For me it's 336x280px.

 

[digitalpoint]

What ad sizes are best?

For me it's 468x60, and 728x90 is 2nd best.

 

[MattW]

728x90 1st, and 468x60 2nd.

 

[rdn]

How do your users feel about ads in threads? Or have they always been there so they don't care?

Just show thread ads to guest.

 

[Southfork1]

728x90 below linkbar and 728x90 below last post.

 

[dutchbb]

What ad sizes are best?

For us, outside of post/article content the leaderboard (728x90) and inside post/article content the full banner (468x60) and the medium rectangle (300x250).

@ OP ads work best if they are:

• camouflaged in content
• relevant to content
• not too annoying
• calling for action

Best locations:

• near buttons, links, navigation
• top middle of the page

 

[Kentarok]

Thanks to all for your responses.

For me it's 468x60, and 728x90 is 2nd best.

Not too small 468x60? How do you see 300x250 in the first message?

Hello,

For me it's 336x280px.

Not a very large size? Where did you put it?

 

[digitalpoint]

Not too small 468x60? How do you see 300x250 in the first message?

I messed with some of the squarer formats inside posts as well as floating them right/left, etc... in the end, the more traditional banner sizes worked better for us.

 

[Kentarok]

I messed with some of the squarer formats inside posts as well as floating them right/left, etc... in the end, the more traditional banner sizes worked better for us.

I've seen that same message using a 468x60 and 728x90 banners. Does that not make you get less revenue?

 

[digitalpoint]

It really just depends on YOUR site... what works for a different site may or may not work for you. The only thing you can really do it test various sizes/placements yourself on your own site and see what works best with your site/users.

 

[Carlos]

I use skyscraper adsense bar on the right column, right under the social share buttons/board stats.

Nothing too intrusive, ya see.

 

[Volion]

It really just depends on YOUR site... what works for a different site may or may not work for you. The only thing you can really do it test various sizes/placements yourself on your own site and see what works best with your site/users.

Good advice. I've just set up a Digital Point Ads account, where exactly is the XenForo add-on for it?