Do you place advertisements on your site? If so, what type? (Text, banner, etc.) What ad service(s) do you use? Affiliate ads, AdSense, AdBrite, etc.? Which is your favorite, and which works best?
We use AdSense coupled with some private advertisers who approaced us directly. It's not a huge money maker but it covers hosting costs so we're happy
We put up ads, host them on our site using a banner plugin from vborg. Works well because they are focused on things people are interested in. No google type ads.
We use Google Ad Manager to host adsense ads along with a handful of other networks. It's proved well to get our adsense rates higher, but we're always looking for other networks to bring on. Many ad networks are turned off by 'forums' so has anybody found ad networks that perform well on forums? We've found 300x250 ad slots (with image, text, and video) work best for us. I believe there's a few reasons for this: 1. It's becoming a popular size on media sites and blogs, so there are lots of advertisers that have content to fill that ad. 2. If it's inline, it can look like an embedded photo or video 3. Interactive flash ads usually prefer that dimension over towers and banners We allow google to decide on a page if it should serve up a text ad, image, or video ad (though another ad network)
use adsense myself its not a money spinner but it helps cover some costs , do a combination of text and banner ads
No ads. Members hate them and most block them with a ad-blocker. Instead, I give a donate link and let members know that donations keep the ads off. Guess what? Monthly servers bills are always on time...
Half and Half. Firs of all, due to the nature of my site and Google's clear Anti-Second Amendment views I don't run ads connected to Google. I also hate ads posted all over a site. So I try and limited them to my home page only and to keep only ads related to my subject content.
I have 468X60 banners on my site. Adtoll manages the banners for me. That way its quick and easy for the person that wants to run the banner, and I dont have to worry about keeping track of anything.
Adsense. Covers the bills so I'm happy with it. That and private donations here and there supplement costs like licensing and renewal fees.
I don't like to put ads on my site, but I do have one up right now on the forum. I don't have any ads on my blogs, although I should consider it since a few of them get decent traffic.
I have 2 AdSense ads on my blog, as well as an affiliate link to the hosting provider my blog users, but the rest of my sites are unmonetized, which will remain that way until probably late summer. Considering my hosting bills are currently $53 a month, I should really move up on that as my blog doesn't make squat considering the incredibly low traffic it gets.
