Text ads within forum content

Shortly Able2Know.com will experiment with an ad format better suited to forums (which are already hard to monetize).

Now it has the potential to be controversial, and for this reason I'm seeking feedback here. Of course whether or not this is decided on is not entirely based on user-feedback as there are things like site viability to consider.

This could be a good enough revenue stream to sustain the site and even future growth. So it will be experimented with but its use in a user-generated setting is controversial. Hence the desire for feedback.

Here is how it works.

It's similar to the Google (AdSense) ads we were using in the past and similar to the Quigo (AdSonar) ads we are currently running in some places in that this too will be contextual.

But there's an additional factor in that IntelliTXT makes certain words within the content itself the ads.

This has a huge upside because many people simply ignore all ads and a publisher like Able2Know that is trying to monetize a free, content-based site has a hell of a time making ends meet.

Given that we are a forum this is even worse, there are too many repeat visitors and this makes it hard to use non-contextual models.

So this could be something that makes a big difference for Able2Know and it's future viability, but I do want to get feedback on it.

Incidentally, I happen to think that a text link ad is less intrusive than banners and such, but others might feel differently ("It's my post and....").

I'd prefer to use this kind of thing, and if it works well enough to remove one of the other ad spaces (e.g. dump the skyscrapers on the right) but that's just me.

Initially in testing it will be added to the existing ads (I can't afford to experiment with ad removals until I know how to generate the revenue that will be lost) but I hope this works well enough to get rid of most of the other ads.

The link ads themselves are liked to differently than regular links (double underline, will be a different color) and when you hover the mouse over them they'll clearly be labelled as an ad.

See the demo to learn more about how it works.