What to do when the archive is performing best with adsense

I have adsense ads (and multiple other ads) in my forums archive. Since there's no other visual distractions there, they perform very well.

Also, since the forums regular guests don't go to the archive for reading threads, I've taken the liberty to set up more visible ads there.

But with vBSEO, the best way to go I've heard is to redirect from archive to forum (I do have a lot of my arhive pages indexed by google). But then I'd miss out on revenue.

What do you think is the best way to deal with this?

While that might be true that you are getting a better CTR with archives, but it is also receiving higher first time visitor traffic than your forum pages which in turns lower the forum signup rate.

Good point.
Maybe the best way to go is to find out how I can show visitors more ads than the members in the forums. I'm not sure how, though.

If conditions allow you to do that, I normally show guests two ads (728x90) per page while members only see one of them.

Here is a tutorial on how to do that, How To Show A Banner After The First Post In A Thread - vBulletin Community Forum

I do have that one, but thanks for helping!

The one that really performs great in the archive, though, is the ad on top of the thread. I was thinking maybe right below navbar would be a good place for a 728x90 only visible for guests.

The sidebar in the archive doesn't perform as well when it comes to adsense, but there I have room for other affiliate ads. I think they are 120x90 or something.

I'm not sure if this can be done with conditionals, though.

There comes a time when you need to weigh the trade off between converting users and making instant cash.

Your archives are ranked well, because stock vb doesn't.
Now that you have vbseo, you will notice that trend will change.

You WANT your SE guests on your real site. It has a better call-to-action for sign up, shows non-forum savvy people what your forum is all about, etc etc.

Think long term.

Does the 1 click joe Q searcher gives you now worth more to you than converting him to a member, offering 100s of posts of content over the years he is active on your board, thus repeating the cycle for John X searcher later?

You're right.
I do need to think long term. I guess I just had a little hard to let go of what's the sites best performing parts today. But I get that the point is change here. After all: If what I was doing was so great, I wouldn't need vBSEO in the first place.