Hi all,

Time for another experiment and since we started Playing with Google a while ago, here's another one linked to Google. As of today Baanboard.com will show some Google AdSense banners on some of the pages. Before you start to panic:

banners will only show for users that are not logged in. Hopefully this will encourage some of the many anonymous users to sign up.
there will be text-based ads only. No images and no flash.
banners size and locations are not too promiment so even if you decide not to log in to the forum, they will not spoil your reading experience.
ads should be linked to content of the forums, ie ERP/ICT related. I do not want to see any smut or other rubbish ads on the board so if you do catch one, please let me know.


Of course you will ask 'why add these banners?'. Well two reasons really: first the extra money won't harm although I have no idea how much revenue these ads can/will generate and Google is vehemently unclear about this. So I do not expect this to pay for my swimming pool ;) but every penny counts. Secondly, I have been approached by quite a lot of members recently that wish to contribute in a some soft of monetary way to the board. Each time I have pointed these members to the available options of either sponsoring or donorship but it seems that the actual hurdle of taking out the credit card even for $10 is still too big. So here's a cute way you can actually financially reward your favorite forum without spending money out of your pocket: click on the Google Ads.

I will probably throw a poll on this in a month or so and see what people think of the Google Ads. Depending on the outcome I may decide to take them down again or make them available for registered members as well etc.

Note that until the ad scheme is well and truly on the way, some of the times only 'public service ads' are shown for which Baanboard does not get any revenue.

Feedback is as always much appreciated!