How damaging are ads to product adoption?

Has anyone come across any research or has had experience with just how much more damaging to product/site adoption it is to have ads like AdSense on your site versus not having them?

Any measurable statistics? Case studies? Examples?

I am wondering whether I should get rid of ads. Or maybe just keep ads on the bottom of every page? What are some good ad strategies?

I looked at your site and since it looks professional and ads are just a small portion of the content, I wouldn't worry about getting rid of them. Moving them to the bottom of the page may be a good idea though, but I don't see any changes as necessary.

Conversely, if your website looked unprofessional and were covered with ads- and this is not the case- I would get rid of them.

Not sure how much this advice is worth since I do not have any relevant statistics at hand, besides a personal opinion.

My thoughts on advertising on new sites has always been that you leave space for them but don't turn them on until you have a good amount of traffic to the site. The justification is that in the beginning you are looking for as much adoption of the product as possible and you can't take the cost of people who are ad averse jumping ship. Once the product has proven itself and has enough traffic to make ads actually worthwhile (money wise) you can start adding them slowly and track how they affect conversion rates.

The general idea is to reduce friction as much as possible in the beginning and then once the flow of new users is enough for you to lose a few who don't like ads, you phase them in slowly.

Hope this made a little bit of sense.