Google Ads in the Forum?

This is something I've wanted to address and get the popular concensus from you the frequent viewers/reviewers who I feel have the most say for this site.

Since we get a ton of hits on our forums ('demotivational posters', 'bleedman is a pedophile', etc) I was debating adding Google Ads. These ads (apparently) would only appear UNDER the first post on every topic. The last thing I honestly want to do is spam OUR forum with tons of ads and make it look like a cheap hooker than a professional and attractive hooker... I mean website.

If we decide to do ad revenue, I will keep it discreet... unlike some other people...

http://www.cinemassacre.com/new/index.php
http://spoonyexperiment.com/

I think any money made would be used to pay off hosting, domain name registration, and other site-related maintenance. Plus, it would be nice to get some decent software and hardware to actually crank out videos for once...

I just want to know your thoughts on the matter before I make any executive decisions. Do ads look like shit, or are you okay if they are used sparingly?

add's look like ass. it would totally bring down the quality of the site but, money is always a good thing. if you need it, take it. use the adds but try and make it very sparingly if they look like that amount of ass.

I agree whole-heartedly, and the last thing I want is this site to have a ton of ads that obstruct the content.

I've gone ahead and added the Google Ads to the forum. You will notice that AFTER the first post in a forum topic, there is a 2nd post that is a google ad, but actually resembles a normal forum post. Neat huh? Also, the ad will ONLY show up after the first post, and never again during the topic. Discreet.

I will be advertising the HELL out of the following pages, though:

404 error page - we might as well make it work for us
The forum Search results page
Maybe some other pages that we never use

You'll probably never see ads outside of the forum, and especially not embedded in our reviews.

yeah, the way they are posted doesn't make them look so bad. and there is not enough adds to distract from the topic or page for that matter. if the adds were decent with this type of display I might actually want to pay attention to them

Yeah, I tried to get them squeezed in as unobtrusively as possible. My first attempts to add the adsense made the site look cheap, so I quickly scrapped them. I am content with what we have now.

I am thinking that these ads, paired with a fix that removes Google Image's frame and forces a viewer to look at the page content, will drive some good ad revenue. Nothing spectacular though.

The ads look a lot better than I had expected.

Hooray for no site-rape!

Yup, I didn't want this site to look like a cheap hooker like other popular sites. (see previous comments)

A site has to do what a site has to do