Bye-Bye Chitika!

Did you guys get a kick out of this announcement by Chitika?
http://chitika.com/blog/?p=23

They are talking about what G calls "smart pricing", however this phenomenon is delivered to the publishers in a whole new light.

I am a CPC advertizer myself and I know that not all the clicks convert. Heck, vast majority of the clicks do not convert! However, a visit to my site is still worth something, such as the user gets familiar with the site, maybe even bookmarks it if it's deemed important enough. Then there is a possibility that he or she will come back and actually purchase the product. Also, looking at my own behavior online I can say that most of my clicks are "curiosity clicks". I am going back to the site 3-5 times before I actually make a purchase, and that can be stretched over VERY long period of time that no cookie is going to survive.

Filtering out "curiosity clicks" is not fair to the publishers. We are not paid the percentage of sale and therefore we cannot be responsible for the merchant's sales results. If we were, Chitika would have to pay dozens of dollars per click 'cause that's what sales associates are paid.

This filtering out of "curiosity clicks" is an attempt to twist arms to the publishers community and, in my mind, will bring Chitika to its end. They got into the big league way too fast, got too comfortable there, and are coming down as fast as they came if they don't adjust their business models to the way this business operates.

 

I noticed this a little earlier this morning - bad, bad move imo. I was only running Chitika on two sites - that number will be one or none by the end of this weekend.

If they want to filter out "curiosity clicks" they should just change it to a CPM program.

 

I don't think you understand what this means. Previously if you clicked anywhere in the white space where the image and information was, it counted as a click,

They've just changed it to so the text is a click now.

Geez. Actually, you know what? Go drop ship, it means more power to me

 

1 click yesterday. I usually have around 5.

 

Well, my site didn't even get accepted, after they took 5 business days to respond, despite the claim of:

"We will follow up with you by email within 2 business days."

All the gave me was a list of about 7 reasons why my site *might* have got rejected - so it's pretty useless for me.

Filtering out 'curiosity clicks' seems like a really bad move, but will eventually lead to them making more money no doubt, that's all that counts

 

As it should be in my opinion. Publishers are giving them ad space - a click within that ad space should result in a payment.

When it's all said and and done though it's about ROI. The ads that generate the best ROI on my sites will be the ones I stick with. I'll just watch it over a few weeks and see how it goes.

 

I have been following the Chitika threads here for about two weeks after being approved for their program.
I must say I have experieced a huge increase in earnings per day than with Adsense, and I am basically able to get the exact ads I want my readers to see.
I spend about an hour a day changing keywords to meet my requirements and it is paying off.
The recent change has not changed anything for me; as a matter of fact I did a bit of fine tuning and changed the description text a bit and actually have had an increase in clicks.
Chitika is not for everyone, but as some people have, put some work into it and don't expect a huge cash flow right away. Give it some time, don't panic and try different placement and color combinations.

 

How did you figure that out? The announcement reads rather blatant "filtering out" i.e. not counting clicks that don't convert. My yesterday CTR was the grand ZERO. You might be kidding yourself by thinking this is a technicality. This is a push from the advertisers saying: "you know, guys at Chitika, your ads don't covert very well, we are going to drop out". Since this is who pays Chitika's bills they did not have guts to object and say: "oh, year? Does every one of your AdWords clicks convert?" What Chitika did not realize is that, unlike Google, they do not have vast search engine traffic to tap into! They depend of publishers just as much as they depend on advertisers, and pissing publishers off is NOT a smart move.
I don't really care for my sites 'cause it will take me couple minutes to yank the code and I'm probably going to loose couple hundred $, but I can see what Shoomoney's of this business must feel if treated like that. I'd be pissed!

I think you are not getting it, my friend: my dropping out of the program is not going to increase your traffic or click-thru or CPC, so there is nothing to gain here for you. Good luck!

 

My clicks have gone up since they made this change.. Not really sure why, but they have...

I think they found that people clicking on the general area of the description were converting at a much lower rate.

I don't have a problem with it myself. I think people are prematurely freaking out.

But that tends to be the way of the world. Jerk the knee halfway across the globe then sort things out later.

They only did this a few days ago so it is not even possible for anyone to have a real basis for making a decision to drop them or not. But that is just me.

 

So it starts. Discontented Chitika publishers.

 

Well, this could be good news for Chitika. It could mean that they started gaining some traction. However, it is WAY too early for Chitika to behave like G or even Y! and start dictating their rules without actually listening to both sides of the table. Like I said, publishers is all they have - no search engine traffic of their own whatsoever.

ANY advertiser (myself included, obviously) is going to complain that ads don't convert as much as they'd like to. This is true in the off-line world, too. So, Chitika is on a slippery path of listening only to those that foot the bill and not those that provide the ad space.

 

Ditto, aeiouy. I am having great days with chitika, yesterday was my best one so far.

 

I've experienced a great drop in clicks and my referral revenue has stopped completely.
Bummer

 

My clicks just quintupled...

 

The site I put Chitika on must not be well-suited to it because I ran the ads for a week and didn't get a single click, trying various positions, keywords, ad types, etc. Someone said that casual surfing sites did well with this program, but not for me. So basically I don't care about this new policy change - chitika never did anything for me anyway.

 

I only have Chitika on one neglected site and only on about 8 pages. Though CTR is not great and on days when I actually have a click, it is just that - a click, nevertheless, yesterday's solitary clickthrough earned three times more than any other. The cpc has gone up by over 300%.

 

This is lame. I now get 5 times liess clicks. I guess its not too bad because im using adsense and chitika at the same time.

 

yes it is lame.
out of 2700 impressions yesterday i only received 2 lousy clicks. i'm still giong to give it more of a try as i've only been using chitika for a few days now, but 2 measily clicks out of 2700 impressions isn't good at all.

 

My CTR has dropped slightly but the CPC is still high enough to make it a worthy source of income. I'm find targeting the ad to specific pages is well worth the effort.

 

I got an email from Chitika... they seem worried by the fact that my impressions are very high yet my click through rate is average and decreased by 75% after their "Smart Pricing" adjustment.

Needless to say... I promptly told them to please disclose their "CC" policy? Does that include repeat click from the same IP within 24 hours and from international visits? As my site being a news fan site does get many repeat visitors worldwide within at 24 hour period whenever I update with a hot "Elvis" news item... and spend out my newsletter to my 5K+ subscribers

As I update my site on just about a daily bases culling by "CC" should it continue will not be a viable income earner... and I will test Chitika for another 30 days...

Should the culling decrease my click by 75% I will jump ship...