I've replaced those placeholder sidebar banner ad looking things with something that cycles between variants. Currently there's just a basic news and shoutbox view, but I'll add other stuff like:

- Messages from the shoutbox

- Trade items that have been promoted

- Casino statistics

- Daily leaderboard snippets

- Recently-popular forum posts

- Point trading average prices

- News snippets

- Teasers about upcoming features

I don't think I'm entirely sold on them just yet, but it's certainly better than what was there. I've seen other games with a sidebar that changes to show various things, so it feels like there's something in it, but it might need to be made visually more separate from the rest of the page.