Forum Ad Placement

The placement of ads should be something you should think long and hard about, or at the very least think about. Some places are really easy to place an ad at. Others may require template tweaks, add-ons, or other forum modifications. At the bottom I will list additional resources and ideas where I will link to many mods on vbulletin.org. If you are not finding one to your liking just head over to their site and search, as there are many that I have not listed.

If you are a member of several monetized forums then you’ll likely notice that there are more places to put ads then the places I’ve shown in the heatmap. I’ve left those off because I personally don’t like ads in most of those places as I find them too intrusive to truly enjoy the community experience.

Header:

Once members are familiar with your forum they will tend to not pay much attention to the logo or any ads placed up here, but it is a common location, is not very intrusive, and is fairly easy to add. This location is nice for smaller banner ads, and as it’s on every page can bring in a fair number of impressions. To add an ad here look in your header template between the <!-- logo --> tags.

• Header Left: On most forums the left side of the header is where the site logo is positioned, and while this is common, it is not mandatory. You could place your ad here and your logo on the right side.
• Header Right: The stock location for ads and site logos. As I said, placing ads here may lead to product blindness, but it’s still a fairly decent place to place your ads.
  

Navigation Bar:

Side Bar (left):

Likely one of the best places to put an ad would be in the sidebar, and specifically the left side. Generally a site will have a navigational menu at the top of the column then place an ad or two beneath that. The nice part of having it here is that it’s closer to where your members eyes will fall while they are looking for new threads, and should their eyes wander at all, they have a high tendency to land upon these ads. I have listed a few methods to add a sidebar in additional resources below.

Side Bar (right):

Ad blindness can be a major problem here, and having a left and right side bar can result in scrunched content in the middle. I recommend having a single sidebar be it left or right, though statistically the left will fair better. However, if you are trying to be less intrusive to your members then you may wish to consider the right side.

Between posts:

There is a wide variety of options for placing your ads between posts so I’ll touch on two of the main ones.

• Text Link Ads: These are likely the least intrusive ads you can display, and if they fit within the theme of your forum can also be the most effective. As your readers must scroll passed these with them in their line of site you may notice a better click through rate then any other location.
• Banner Ads: A bit more intrusive then the Text Ads I’ve mentioned above but equally effective. To help keep them from being an eye sore you should play around with the types and sizes of ads available as to not disrupt the flow of the thread.

Before Quick Reply:

In the Admin Control Panel you can set it so that members must click the quick reply Icon in order to unlock the Quick Reply Editor. If that is set, then a user clicks to reply it will take the window down to the ad, placing it in an excellent position to be seen. However, when they use the normal reply method such an ad may go overlooked, so it is up to you as the Administrator to determine if this would be a good placement for ads. At any rate is should have a higher click rate then a footer ad.

Footer:

Ads placed in the footer are the least seen by any member and many link buyers will not buy footer links for this reason. Ads here are also the least intrusive, as many members will never see one. Placing a footer ad is as easy as placing a header ad. Simply log into your control panel, and then look in Styles and Templates for your footer. Implementation should be as simple as placing the desired HTML.

In the end it is up to you where you would like to place your ads and I hope that you have found this article informative enough to help in such a decision. It is paramount that you keep your core members happy and to find that happy medium between monetizing your forums and spamming yourself out of existence. Try one or two of the placements, then try another one or two. Tweak and try again. Eventually you will find that happy place where you and your member base are both happy.