Three reasons why AdSense doesn't work well on forums.
September 10, 2006
If you had big dreams of making a mint with AdSense on your very popular forum, you were probably weeping after looking at the actual bottom line once you did so.
The fact is, AdSense doesn't work so well on forums. In fact, none of the AdSense Case Studies are about forums.
Why do forums do so badly? There are 3 main reasons.
Visitors in the Wrong Frame of Mind
If someone is doing research for a particular product or service, and they land on your article regarding that product or service, they are likely buy minded. They are actually looking to buy.
With forums, however, most people are interaction minded. They're not looking to buy something. Rather, they are looking to discuss something.
Those two frames of mind are very different. In the first case the visitor may click on an AdSense ad because they are shopping around and want to explore the options. In the second case the visitor isn't paying attention to anything on the page but what people are saying. They might follow a recommended product link posted by a user, but they are far less likely to click on an AdSense ad.
Repeat Visitors Make For Low CTR
Another reason why CTR on forums is low is because most of the visitors to a forum have been there dozens of times before. They've either already seen and visited the ads they were interested in, or they're so used to seeing them that they start to ignore them (read: "ad blindness").
Besides, you may show 500,000 page views on a forum for the month, but if the average repeat visitor views 10 pages a day reading threads, then your actually number of visitors is far lower. So your stats themselves may be deceiving.
Ad-Targeting is Tough on Forums
Finally, it's tough to target ads on forums, because discussions tend to wander around and around, touching on this and that as the main topic is discussed. Any human could tell you the basic topic of a discussion like that, but it's a lot harder for computers to figure out–even if it is Google's computers.
So you often get mis-targeted ads on forums, and that, too, brings down your click-through rate.
What Can Be Done?
Google offers a number of forum optimization techniques for AdSense on their adsense blog. They will help, but don't expect miracles.
Also, AdSense guru Joel Comm's AdSense Secrets ebook has an outstanding chapter on how to make AdSense work with forums and Internet communities. If you haven't read his ebook yet, I recommend you do so.
Here's another method you may want to try. Remember that your forum visitors are usually very interested in the subject matter–interested enough to go through the registration process for your forum and discuss it!
What you can do is leverage those visitors by adding a place to your site for articles and product reviews related to the forum subject. When you post a new article or review, let the forum members know about it: post a thread requesting feedback on the article, or better yet, email your member list requesting that they read and review the article.
This accomplishes two things:
1) It reminds people who haven't been to your forum in a while that it exists (see this related post about email list building). It's easy to register for a forum and forget about it. But a friendly request for an article review can reactivate some inactive members, which creates more content on your forum when they post and can generate more revenue from clicks.
2) It gets your members out of "interaction" mode by pulling them away from a discussion and into an article, which increases the likelihood that they will click on the related ads.
Summing it all Up
There's no reasons why forums can't be profitable with AdSense, though their click-through rates almost never achieve the double-digits. Most forum owners would be happy to have a low single-digit CTR. But following the techniques above can help you improve that bottom line and find new ways of leveraging your user-base.
Remember, too, that all of the forum content is created for you for free by your members, so it's really all free money anyway. 
Comments
8 Responses to “Three reasons why AdSense doesn't work well on forums.”
-
Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
-
I just relaunched my forum at
http://forum.lotteryscamreport.com and people seem to click on the adsense ads there, as my forum is build to support people doing research for lottery scams. I had to relaunch the forum as I had technical difficulties and some hacking there, so right now there are not many users registered.
However I also use the forum so people can download a free report. So I guess it plays along with all being said, and my forum having people in "research mode" at this point rather then just communicating.
To Semmy:
There are some forums that are designed for researching products, vacations, whatever, that do very well with AdSense for that very reason. Gotta get people when they are looking to buy.
Hmmm, I did not say adsense does not work in forums. I said, from a marketing perspective, adsense was akin to putting a revolving door on the front of your online shop. Whereby a prospect, your prospect would be stolen from your site with no chance of returning without retyping your web address or hitting the back button one or more times.
Therefore it would make business sense to do a cost volume profit analysis on the situation with adsense.
In my opinion, it would not be cost effective having Adsense ads on my pages where those ads competed directly with my products.
Because, if I sell a wedding dress for say £300 and lose a sale to Adsense who is advertising competing wedding dress supplyers as a 'dedicated or targeted ad' and I only get say $0.10 for the click then I would be a fool to allow them on my site.
As a final note. please do not ad me to your mailing list because I will automatically block your adress if I get a stream of emails.
Kind regards
Stephan Toth
Oh and by the way, Adbrite from adbrite.com is a far better system than Adsense which in my opinion is nothing more than a rip off. Perhaps you should check that out.
Kind regards
Stephan Toth
Your website is very Good. I think, I will design my website the same that!
I in process to setup my community forum due to thinking from forum, the impression will increase but read your article no 2 "Repeat Visitors Make For Low CTR" make me thinking twice to proceed or not with my forum, but that thing not stop me to success with adsense.
http://www.budak-u.com
http://hair-loss-hair.blogspot.com
Hi Jonathon,
Nice article and some very valid points. I used to adsense forums but the click thru rate was poor.
The sites achieved PR4's and 5's so I changed them to "wordcloud" site with articles and paid link backs to users sites intergrated with one adsense block size "300×250_as" and have seen an increase in the click ratio that is unbelievable from sites that produced almost nothing to them now produce $5 a day.
So people expeiment and test, change sites etc.
Just my 2 cents
Kind regards
Mike Russen
Jonathon. As you may have noticed I try to get to every blog you post.Your information is always topical and extremely useful.
I have never tried adsense with forums and after reading this I will only ever try it as an adjunctive practice. You probably just save me a bunch of time even though I always sensed that most forums would be cold areas for good adsense income.
Thanks for the insight