wtf is discourse-adplugin?

The Discourse Ad Plugin lets forum owners display advertisements on their Discourse forums. If you run a community on Discourse and want to earn revenue by showing ads, this plugin connects your forum to major advertising platforms so you can start serving ads without needing custom development work. It supports several ad platforms including Google AdSense, Google DoubleClick for Publishers, Amazon Affiliates, Carbon Ads, and AdButler. There is also a "House Ads" feature that lets you create and serve your own ads directly from Discourse, which is useful if you want to promote your own content or sell ad space privately rather than using an external ad network. You write the ad as HTML, style it with your forum's theme, and assign it to display slots. Once installed, you choose where ads appear on your forum. Available placements include the top of the homepage, above topic content, above suggested topics, and between specific posts in a thread. You can also control who sees ads using Discourse's trust level system, for example, showing ads only to logged-out visitors while hiding them from trusted community members. You can further exempt specific groups, categories, tags, or personal messages from showing ads, which gives you fine-grained control over the experience. This would appeal to any forum operator looking to monetize their community. A hobby forum might use House Ads to cross-promote a related project, while a larger community might plug in AdSense or DoubleClick to generate ongoing ad revenue. The trust level controls are particularly practical, you can reward your most engaged members with an ad-free experience while still earning from casual visitors. One important note: the README states that this plugin has now been bundled into Discourse core, meaning it ships with Discourse by default rather than requiring a separate install. The standalone plugin still exists for reference and for older setups.