Along with your News headlines, place banner or text ads:

Ok,

From your admin control panel, click on the "News and newsletters" under the Main menu, Now click on the  "News" link, and in the open window you'll find a field that you may start a Banner code or Text link code that will fade in and out rotating once you have submitted 2 or more adds. this field will except HTML, so be careful what you ad not to stretch the display more than you have allowed according to your Theme center width.

Now once this done, you may go to the "current theme" option from your Admin Control Panel and scroll down the theme options a select the "news fader" to be displayed or "on" from the radio button!

You will have these three options:

Enable News?
Show news fader on board index
Fading delay between items for the news fader

And of course you can add some site news as well or directions site links and so on as you please!

Just one Note, if using banner stick to the same size banner like: 468 X 60 max and test the same amount of lines, so the display window does not vary too muck in size when news or ads change from one to the other!
You may also go back and edit them.

And try not use <BR tags <P tags, just center tags to keep then uniform. so you news does not expand and contract too much.

Current theme Options:

*Show news fader on board index: (check off radio button)
*Fading delay between items for the news fader: (Default setting is "5000")
*Number of recent posts to display on board index: 1 - 10 and or what ever

Note: only a quick way, but works great for that position only!

There are ad Mods available, but they do not always work with all themes, unless you modify the theme's templates on some occasions, depending on versions and themes!

Another option would be the global header and footer mods at the SMF site! to place ads at the top and bottom of your forum!

regards,
Maxx