When you go to a forum and you see ads, does it take your interest away? Do you not want to go to the forum because of a few ad links on the homepage? Me, I don't care if they have ads on their forum. On paid forums like vBulletin and IPB, you need all the money you can because hosting them and supporting their monthly/yearly costs is not cheap. I don't even mind seeing ads on free software. These free software forums could use the extra money to buy vBulletin, IPB or whatever. What are your views on ads?
Ads for me doesn't matter, usually I take a look, sometimes click, but they aren't a BIG thing that I care about when looking at forums.
I don't mind, you gotta find a way of income and as Pandemix said, with the hosting costs around 6.95 dollars a month then IPB or vBulletin to pay for yearly if you bought the yearly licenses then yeah. But they must blend in fairly well with the forum because you do not want to see red ads on a black background, it looks garish.
If you want to make money.. You NEED ads! I don't mind them. They don't tern me off sites if i see them.. As long as they don't POP UP!!!!!
i agree with SIC, ads are pretty much a necessity in society whether its the publisher or the advertiser, personally i couldn't care less if the forum or site has ads on it so long as they don't get in my way of viewing the site or otherwise open more browser windows, if there is a banner on a site and it catches my attention and i find it interesting or otherwise something to what i am looking for i will click but most times probably wont click.
Its going fine with me because i know some ads really need to make some webmaster earn something from their forum. No one want to lose any way in order to make money. If some webmaster run his forum to make money. I think its nothing wrong with that..
I just dont like many ads. (i.e. ads all over the forum). according to me, one ad unit is ok ( example in the forum www.jackiechou.com/forums ). If you have many ads like talkgold.com has, it takes too long to load the page, thats the problem otherwise all are fine.
yes, if there are too many ads.. they become annoying. i think the secret is placing them in key positions where ads can be clicked even by mistake you can also put them in each page of a thread.
