33andrain

Gotcha. To use IPS to run AdSense, I followed the below steps. Even if it does not help you, this guide will hopefully help others who are looking to monetize using AdSense (or any other advertisement platform, since the steps will likely be the same).
Google AdSense
Setup an AdSense account Either enable Auto Ads or create your own ad units via AdSense console Copy the code provided. Note, each ad unit will have its own unique code. This is important for reporting later on; to understand which ad units perform better/worse than others IPS > AdminCP > Advertisements
In AdminCP, navigate to System > Advertisements "+Create New" (top right) a new unit to correspond with the ad units created in the AdSense console Copy the respective code provided from the AdSense console to your new IPS ad unit in the IPS console IPS gives you options for page placement. I always select "Define Your Own Locations" because it gives you maximum control over placement Give your ad unit a unique "Custom Location Key". Each ad unit needs a custom location key name IPS > AdminCP > Pages
In AdminCP, navigate to Pages > Blocks Create New Block > Custom Block > Manual HTML In the Details tab, give your new block a unique name and then move to Content tab Add code <center><div>{advertisement="Custom Location Key Name"}</div></center> replacing Custom Location Key Name with the one you chose earlier Save In original or new window, open the Block Manager and add your new block wherever you want the ad to appear on your page(s) Hope this helps, but please provide feedback and I will update as requested. I can definitely add more (way more 😉 ) details if anyone thinks it would be useful. 

Gotcha. To use IPS to run AdSense, I followed the below steps. Even if it does not help you, this guide will hopefully help others who are looking to monetize using AdSense (or any other advertisement platform, since the steps will likely be the same).
Google AdSense
Setup an AdSense account Either enable Auto Ads or create your own ad units via AdSense console Copy the code provided. Note, each ad unit will have its own unique code. This is important for reporting later on; to understand which ad units perform better/worse than others IPS > AdminCP > Advertisements
In AdminCP, navigate to System > Advertisements "+Create New" (top right) a new unit to correspond with the ad units created in the AdSense console Copy the respective code provided from the AdSense console to your new IPS ad unit in the IPS console IPS gives you options for page placement. I always select "Define Your Own Locations" because it gives you maximum control over placement Give your ad unit a unique "Custom Location Key". Each ad unit needs a custom location key name IPS > AdminCP > Pages
In AdminCP, navigate to Pages > Blocks Create New Block > Custom Block > Manual HTML In the Details tab, give your new block a unique name and then move to Content tab Add code <center><div>{advertisement="Custom Location Key Name"}</div></center> replacing Custom Location Key Name with the one you chose earlier Save In original or new window, open the Block Manager and add your new block wherever you want the ad to appear on your page(s) Hope this helps, but please provide feedback and I will update as requested. I can definitely add more (way more 😉 ) details if anyone thinks it would be useful. 

Right. If I have to, I will turn off In Article and In Feed ads. Those aren't as important to me. So many clicks are accidental, which is why I like the anchor ads on mobile. Stinks to have to admit it, but the more intrusive the better, especially when an Ad Free experience is offered as an option. 
Another tip - As I said above, accidental clicks are a big part of CTR, especially on message boards where repeat users are more likely to have ad blindness as noted by @Sonya* above. I have noticed that the page loading is slower and bouncy whenever Tweets are linked and auto-formatted within posts. The more tweets which have to load on a page, the better the chance you can get someone to accidentally click an ad. Again, I feel dirty admitting this is a practice, but if you read up on it...it's all part of the ugly business of monetization. 

Hi - Think I mentioned in the OP, but maybe it was confusing. I use a mixture of manually placed (asynchronous?) tags AND auto ads.
The particular Auto Ads I like are the mobile anchors, which stick to the top/bottom of pages. They are highly annoying and obtrusive 👹. I also have Vignettes enabled but I've never seen them in action. And lastly, I have either the In Feed or In Article ads enabled. One of these causes the issue identified in your linked thread, where the ads overlay the actual text in the posts. The other nicely and conveniently places ads within the content of longer posts. The other, I disabled via Google's settings to stop the overlay issue from occurring.
Does this help? 
Hi Sonya - Thank you for sharing your experience RE: CTR. This is helpful and makes sense.
May I ask how you are using AdSense? Via Auto Ads? Would you like me to just explain exactly, in steps, how I am manually placing ads using custom keys?

I see a smattering of Adsense related threads in the community, but no one resource which community owners and other interested parties can reference when it comes to the optimization of Invision community specific Adsense monetization. Figure it is only fair to share some of the details of my specific community. Mods, I am unintentionally about to plug my forum (which I'm sure is against posting policy), but I am doing so only because numerous literature I have consulted identifies forum subject matter as of material relevance both in the optimization of Adsense monetization.
I run the 33andrain Community, a forum for weather professionals and hobbyists to discuss important weather related topics. Since December 2016, we have over 1.5 million page views, so we've been able to grow fairly significantly since launching. Specific stats RE: ads:
We started running Adsense ads in November 2017. Today, our ads are a mixture of manually placed ad units and Adsense auto ad governed page level ad units. IPS Support has been an invaluable resource as I implemented my ads strategy. Thank you! Ads are served using IPS's powerful built-in tools (Advertisements set with custom placement keys, and Blocks added using the Block Manager. Auto Ads are done the same way, with the custom location being added directly under the <head> tags of the globalTemplate HTML if each of my themes. If you have any questions about how I do this, please ask and I'll be happy to explain in more detail On my own (later supported by what I found here) I ascertained that optimal ad placement -- meaning the location where I received the highest # of impressions, clicks and CTR -- is just before and after the last post of each thread. I accomplish this by using @newbie LAC's incredible plugin -- (NB40) Ads After X Posts -- probably the most single most valuable plug-in available in the Marketplace given the research I did confirming optimal ad placement. Note I also have ads in the global header and sidebars to maximize above-the-fold impressions, but clicks for those are notably less than the ones wrapping posts I offer an Ad Free monthly or seasonal membership to members using IPS's Store application. Purchase of the Ad Free plan automatically puts users into a specific Group which does not see any of the ad units. Where I struggle, and where I am hoping the community can knowledge share on best practices, is in maximizing those click throughs and the overall CTR. Mine is low...very low compared to average. Only .3-.4%. Apparently, should be 2-3%!  So, I am not even coming close to maximizing monetization opportunity, despite all the research and relative success I have had.
This is where I open up to discussion. Does anyone have any tips? Are there specific URLs you ad to your Adsense block lists, which have particularly low CTR? I have seen numerous lists online, but who knows how these are sourced (e.g., Ad publishers would have very different priorities and motivations than site operators) or if these lists even work? Are there any other optimizations you have implemented, either/or IPS and Google, which have been successful for you? Would love to get a discussion going.

I see a smattering of Adsense related threads in the community, but no one resource which community owners and other interested parties can reference when it comes to the optimization of Invision community specific Adsense monetization. Figure it is only fair to share some of the details of my specific community. Mods, I am unintentionally about to plug my forum (which I'm sure is against posting policy), but I am doing so only because numerous literature I have consulted identifies forum subject matter as of material relevance both in the optimization of Adsense monetization.
I run the 33andrain Community, a forum for weather professionals and hobbyists to discuss important weather related topics. Since December 2016, we have over 1.5 million page views, so we've been able to grow fairly significantly since launching. Specific stats RE: ads:
We started running Adsense ads in November 2017. Today, our ads are a mixture of manually placed ad units and Adsense auto ad governed page level ad units. IPS Support has been an invaluable resource as I implemented my ads strategy. Thank you! Ads are served using IPS's powerful built-in tools (Advertisements set with custom placement keys, and Blocks added using the Block Manager. Auto Ads are done the same way, with the custom location being added directly under the <head> tags of the globalTemplate HTML if each of my themes. If you have any questions about how I do this, please ask and I'll be happy to explain in more detail On my own (later supported by what I found here) I ascertained that optimal ad placement -- meaning the location where I received the highest # of impressions, clicks and CTR -- is just before and after the last post of each thread. I accomplish this by using @newbie LAC's incredible plugin -- (NB40) Ads After X Posts -- probably the most single most valuable plug-in available in the Marketplace given the research I did confirming optimal ad placement. Note I also have ads in the global header and sidebars to maximize above-the-fold impressions, but clicks for those are notably less than the ones wrapping posts I offer an Ad Free monthly or seasonal membership to members using IPS's Store application. Purchase of the Ad Free plan automatically puts users into a specific Group which does not see any of the ad units. Where I struggle, and where I am hoping the community can knowledge share on best practices, is in maximizing those click throughs and the overall CTR. Mine is low...very low compared to average. Only .3-.4%. Apparently, should be 2-3%!  So, I am not even coming close to maximizing monetization opportunity, despite all the research and relative success I have had.
This is where I open up to discussion. Does anyone have any tips? Are there specific URLs you ad to your Adsense block lists, which have particularly low CTR? I have seen numerous lists online, but who knows how these are sourced (e.g., Ad publishers would have very different priorities and motivations than site operators) or if these lists even work? Are there any other optimizations you have implemented, either/or IPS and Google, which have been successful for you? Would love to get a discussion going.

@33andrain What one was causing the ad's to appear over posts, the in-feed or in-article, or both?

I will give this app a try to get any position for ad block you like. 
 

Gotcha. To use IPS to run AdSense, I followed the below steps. Even if it does not help you, this guide will hopefully help others who are looking to monetize using AdSense (or any other advertisement platform, since the steps will likely be the same).
Google AdSense
Setup an AdSense account Either enable Auto Ads or create your own ad units via AdSense console Copy the code provided. Note, each ad unit will have its own unique code. This is important for reporting later on; to understand which ad units perform better/worse than others IPS > AdminCP > Advertisements
In AdminCP, navigate to System > Advertisements "+Create New" (top right) a new unit to correspond with the ad units created in the AdSense console Copy the respective code provided from the AdSense console to your new IPS ad unit in the IPS console IPS gives you options for page placement. I always select "Define Your Own Locations" because it gives you maximum control over placement Give your ad unit a unique "Custom Location Key". Each ad unit needs a custom location key name IPS > AdminCP > Pages
In AdminCP, navigate to Pages > Blocks Create New Block > Custom Block > Manual HTML In the Details tab, give your new block a unique name and then move to Content tab Add code <center><div>{advertisement="Custom Location Key Name"}</div></center> replacing Custom Location Key Name with the one you chose earlier Save In original or new window, open the Block Manager and add your new block wherever you want the ad to appear on your page(s) Hope this helps, but please provide feedback and I will update as requested. I can definitely add more (way more 😉 ) details if anyone thinks it would be useful. 

The Google Auto Ad issue with ads overlaying text in the posts...occurring for me as well. Where did we land on this issue? Is it a google issue and there is no fix? I don't need the ads inside of posts anyway. Just like the mobile anchors and vignettes. Shame they killed the ability to add separately as page level.

I have used DFP to place ads on my community before. I have defined some ads placements in DFP and used AdSense as fallback when no premium advertisers buy out the placement. The pros of DFP is precise targeting, that is not possible in native IPS, e. g. geo targeting down to the city, restrict unique views, select site areas and so on. Now after upgrading I will go with native IPS advertisement as premium banner is getting more and more unpopular. Instead other types of promotion and advertising becomes interesting for our customers.

Hi - Think I mentioned in the OP, but maybe it was confusing. I use a mixture of manually placed (asynchronous?) tags AND auto ads.
The particular Auto Ads I like are the mobile anchors, which stick to the top/bottom of pages. They are highly annoying and obtrusive 👹. I also have Vignettes enabled but I've never seen them in action. And lastly, I have either the In Feed or In Article ads enabled. One of these causes the issue identified in your linked thread, where the ads overlay the actual text in the posts. The other nicely and conveniently places ads within the content of longer posts. The other, I disabled via Google's settings to stop the overlay issue from occurring.
Does this help? 
Hi Sonya - Thank you for sharing your experience RE: CTR. This is helpful and makes sense.
May I ask how you are using AdSense? Via Auto Ads? Would you like me to just explain exactly, in steps, how I am manually placing ads using custom keys?

Yes, please 
I have a large community with over 1000 concurrent users online to the busy hours and run AdSense for years. From my experience CTR is low on boards. That's it. You cannot change it as your community is visited many times a day and there are a lot of impressions made by one user during one visit. You would not expect him to click on every third page on the ads. On contrary the pure content sites have very few impressions per user and thus CTR is higher. Your power users become "blind" and do not see ads at all. They produce many impressions and nearly no clicks. It is also dependent on the subject of your community, the number of different advertisers who concur here. Are there only few of them, the ads become irrelevant to your content and hence have fewer clicks. The only idea to improve your CTR is moving power users and staff to a group that views the site ad free. 

Good topic, can I ask you...Are you using adsense auto ads exclusively instead of using their asynchronous ad tags for different placements? How is auto ads working for you, revenue better or worse? I tried using it back in February but took it down in favor of individual ads.
 

Hello,
Current plugin only add separators
Look at. Maybe this is what you are looking for
 

You link goes to 24 page and Every page param unchecked. In this case advert will be displayed on the first page

If you give me ftp/acp access I'll look into that

Hello,
"l" is last post. Start read from here

Hello,
Can you give a link on a page?

Switch on IPS 4 Default (or IPS 4 Default [Modified] or IPS 4 Dark) theme and you will see adverts.
It's something related with your theme.

I'm not aware of any such issue, I can't really help with installer errors like that though. Contact IPS support?

Why do you think so? It work perfect in all modern browsers (Safari Mac too)

That was weird. I'm sure I did upload the new file, but I might have forgotten to update the version number. All good now.

I am seeing the same error today as above. Assume it is because 3.4.2 is in the process of being uploaded. The changelog is already partially completed below.  

Thank you for responding to the PM. Great add-on for the board.