Xenforo Googles AdSense Integration

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Jose Amaral Mota

Jose Amaral Mota

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Will Xenforo follow IB method (Profit/Credit Sharing not really sure what information and or funds they get from this, as I was a member at version 3) or will we be able to have this for our own use?

It like pulling teeth (actually it is easier to pull them..) to get information about what IB use our accounts for, as I can only find some postings and wiki information.
 
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Onimua said:
Can you actually describe what IPB has done that's different than vB? You've said IPB is best in this area, they did it differently than vB, but you haven't said what it is they do differently that you like. :confused:
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IPB provides a built in advertising placement solution of which adsense is only one optional possibility with (right or wrong) zero controversy. :)
 
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Kier said:
Right now we don't have an AdSense implementation at all.
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Is this because:
- At this point it isn't a priority but you plan to add it later.
- It isn't felt to be necessary as a part of the standard featureset.
- You want to avoid the "paranoia issue".
Kier said:
I'd take this opportunity to say that when I wrote IB's vBulletin integration, I saw nothing nefarious or underhanded about it. This is an instance where paranoia has ruined a perfectly reasonable feature.
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I don't know if it's paranoia or simply a change in perception, but I would absolutely take this statement as fact, and note that the world (and vBulletin) has changed since then.
 
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Ignoring whether IPB or vBulletin are the current market leader, seeing as a customer of either product can neither prove nor disprove that statement, as only IPS or IB can claim that, and I doubt they'd release that information anyways.

I never used the AdSense implementation; I have no problem creating my own ad, doing all my settings on a per section ad, and working to optimize everything myself. Thats either because I'm not lazy, or because I actually see a point in being able to control everything myself to the last minute detail.

All of this can be done manually through templates, and asking for it to be added to v1 seems pointless. I much rather Mike and Kier work on getting everything that is currently their focus done before they add a bunch of features that can already be done without much work by the administrator.  
 
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Forsaken said:
I never used the AdSense implementation; I have no problem creating my own ad, doing all my settings on a per section ad, and working to optimize everything myself. Thats either because I'm not lazy, or because I actually see a point in being able to control everything myself to the last minute detail.

All of this can be done manually through templates, and asking for it to be added to v1 seems pointless. I much rather Mike and Kier work on getting everything that is currently their focus done before they add a bunch of features that can already be done without much work by the administrator.
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Likewise, on my vB forum (3.x) my rotating banner adverts are done with custom PHP code run at certain ad hook locations. So I'm confident the same thing can be done in xF by editing a template. It's not something that needs to be in as standard to start with IMO, I am sure there will be guides on how to modify templates and manually add Adwords quite quickly for users without this sort of knowledge.

However, we must appreciate that large, established forums with advertising are going to want to know they can move seamlessly to xF and it is NOT a major problem keeping their adverts in roughly the same places, or that it will be broken with each upgrade.
 
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i would be fine as long as adding ad codes to popular locations on the forum user interface would be easy...

i bet they would have to be done again on every template update. so the easier it is the better for me...

and of course, i really liked the vb4 (not sure if it was in v3 too) advertising option where i get a set of pre-defined locations and i can just enter the code i want to add. no problems when updating vb... everything is preserved. made my life very easy.
 
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From what I remember, people were not pleased with the fact that when you chose to enable AdSense in vbulletin's offered way, you were linked to IB's dealings with AdSense. Accurate or inaccurate, here is what I pulled from wikipedia:

When installing this version and using the AdSense integration provided by vBulletin.com, users are agreeing to allow Internet Brands to access information about the performance of their ad units. Internet Brands will also be given a monetary referral credit if someone signs up for an AdSense account through a link on the vBulletin forum rather than the owner of the forum.

The owner of the forum is also agreeing to potentially share revenue in the future. While the percentage of revenue sharing is currently set to 0%, a vBulletin Team Member has stated it may be subject to change in the future.

Users are required to opt-out of data sharing if they have activated the AdSense integration and linked their vBulletin.com account with their AdSense account, but by doing so are left unable to use the integration features.

This is not 100% clear during the sign up process, and Internet Brands has not yet released a statement about how they will use the information gathered from linked AdSense accounts, leading to potential privacy issues and a competitive advantage for future Internet Brands owned websites.
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I can't speak for what most people want, as I have no idea, but my idea for this feature would be to simply drop my unique adsense ID into a field somewhere in the forums control panel, and select some pre-determined locations for where the adsense blocks would appear (sidebar, below first post, below navigation bar, ect). Being able to select "display adsense ads for this usergroup" would also be a plus.
 
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Ruven said:
How bout we worry about ads on our forum software till after we have the damn thing running live on our servers?
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Cause giving the devs some input for future ways of making their end users happy is never a bad thing?

Here's my suggestions for ads and banners:

1) I'd like to be able to control the location of my ads in my forum better. The way vB offers it now is okay, but perhaps could be ammended with additional frequently-seen locations. In other words, below the navbar, above the footer, under the first post in a thread, perhaps a standard ad-module in the sidebar.
2) I'd like to not have to choose between either/or graphics and text the way vB currently has it set up. For Google-Ads, I use text-only at the top and footer. I run a custom banner-add-on. It would be awesome if Xenforo would enable me to do both without requiring additional installations, but grouped together under advertising. I exclusively use animated GIFs, but can see other would have a use for Flash banners as well.
3) For banners, I would like to be able to configure an image location, a banner target (as in where to head to when the banner is clicked), dimension-fields, active/inactive checkbox, a counter to keep track how many times a banner has been clicked, and a date-field tat allows me to configure how long a banner will remain active for, with a cron-job deactivating banners once a day or so). Basically everything offered by the VSA Flash Banner mod, but built-in, and with the addition of a date-field (or even better, two date fields to schedule ahead).
4) I would like the ability to be able to switch ads and/or banners off for specific usergroups, without template edits. In other words, it would be greatly appreciated if the default templates have soem default conditional statements built-in to do checks like that.

Lastly, I would love for the ad-model to be transparent. NOT the way IB currently has things going, but seeing I already paid for a forum software license, and seeing it's from then on MY efforts to pull in users that click on ads, the money generated that way ought to be mine. If that's how vB works, then fine, but I'd be much more happy if Xenforo just explicitly states this somewhere in black and white.

Just some thoughts. This list probably is not complete by any means, and I can live with Kier's suggestion of building the forum first, but I figured I'd list some thoughts anyway :)

Cheers,

Peter
 
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ok. someone clear this for me. i do not download the adsense integrated version of vB. but their regular edition has an advertising section that lets me put my own codes in pre-defined locations. is this edition also somehow link my adsense integration with IB people?

i never understood the logic behind their integrated build. i only came to know about the controversy from here...
 
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On vBulletin.com, Wayne Luke stated:

Wayne Luke said:
Jelsoft/IB is looking for referral bonus paid by Google which have no affect on Revenue earned by those signing up. If you already have an extensive Adsense program this probably has not benefit for your site at this time. Though it can allow you to quickly deploy ads on a new site.

You can clearly see on the Google site that revenue sharing with vBulletin.com is set to 0%. I won't guarantee it will always be 0% but don't foresee any reason to change it right now. If it changes you can remove the association from vBulletin.com in your Adsense account on Google's servers.
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I believe this is behind the "integrated adsense paranoia" we're seeing.
 
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(username removed), you made a statement of intent on behalf of Internet Brands. You are in no position to say what their intention is, especially when what you claim that they intend to do is not what they are actually doing. Even the Wikipedia article, which is alarmist and paranoid, does not go so far as to claim that Internet Brands wants a percentage of customers' ad revenue, nor does it make the statement that vBulletin is screwing its own customers. These are your own words, and place you on very shaky legal ground.

The fact is that Internet Brands collects a finders fee from Google for signing people up to AdSense. They do not collect any percentage of ad revenue from those customers they sign up, and the information available to them regarding those customers is extremely limited and of negligible use. Further, they have made no statement to indicate that they would ever consider changing the revenue sharing arrangement, they merely stated that if it were to change, of course they would inform customers.

In this matter, Internet Brands are guilty only of colossal mismanagement of public relations, allowing the thread of paranoia to continue without a response for four whole days before posting a response that was arguably even more inflammatory. I know this because I had to sit by and watch worried customers stew over those days while Internet Brands decided how to respond.

However, they are not guilty of trying to screw their customers over AdSense. The feature is intended to help novice administrators to get AdSense deployed on their forums as quickly and easily as possible, and it just happens that Internet Brands collect a bounty in the process, the cost of which does not come from customers. There is nothing wrong with that at all.
 
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Abomination said:
Cause I cannot go live until I can show ads?

I don't use google ads, we serve ours locally.
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Look at all the negativity over how vB chose to implement ad support in vB4, look how its been received by people.
Who wrote that?
Kier did.
Now, imagine that he has written up something similar or maybe something completely new for XenForo.
Knowing how people have mischaracterized the vB solution and all the negativity that has come along with it... do you think he wants to get into that right now, specially when people cant even have the thing in their hands to see it in action?
Or on the other hand... would you blame him if he just decided to skip out of the box extensive ad support all together?

Now i dont understand how ad support for XenForo is going to work, but it seems to me that most people still dont understand how ad support for vB works.
 
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