http://chitika.com/blog/2008/05/30/well-match-you-up-to-100-take-the-chitikapremium-challenge/ Just saw this on their blog. Make $100 with Chitika Premium in June and they'll match it. Looks like a pretty good incentive
It only works for people who HAVEN'T used Chitika Premium and since Chitika themselves integrated chitika premium into all the other ad formats that means it opts out everyone of their existing publishers. ...a shady promotion. And since Chitika is having click counting problems conveniently during the Month of June, the same time as this promotion is to take place, its doubtful that any new publisher who applies will reach the 100 dollar mark.
Chitika is the most amateurish company I've ever dealt width. They've completely abandoned the RPUs, which were working great on my site, and now my choice is to either start using these new "Premium" eMiniMalls or forget about Chitika altogether. They can't leave a good thing alone.
I had been using other ad formats with Premium integrated in, and my control panel shows a status bar for the $100 challenge. You should be fine unless you specifically created Premium ad units.
Sure you do. Since you're so fond of Chitika, why do you think that during the time when Chitika is doing this promotion that a lot of pusblishers all of a sudden start getting "partial revenue data"? Surely they can't be thinking of using the revenue "lost" by other publishers to pay off those those that do win the Chitika Challenge.
Yep, you got it. Surely it's a scam and they're out to get you. There's no way an expanding ad network ever has tracking and reporting issues. That's never happened before...
I was being sarcastic. I've never seen a network that never had a tracking problem, reporting problem, or outage. The point is, as much as it sucks, it happens.
Of course all networks have tracking problems, but they dont go "JOIN OUR SUPER COOL PROGRAM AND YOU'LL GET $100 MORE!!!" when on the other side the publishers are actually getting less because of the existing problems. Makes no sense. Other networks email their publishers, they respond to complaints, and they focus on the problem. What Chitika did was not send an email, they do not respond to any tickets sent to them, and they do not focus on the problem. It already been a week since there was a report problem (still not fixed) and now there is a new problem where instead of showing eminimalls, Chitika is now showing generic banner ads to people who have opted out of their CPM program. Chitika is really going on a downward spiral. hundreds of publishers quiting, high quality advertisers leaving.
The fact that it's happening at the exact same time they're trying to get people to switch their ads to the new "Premium" ones is highly suspicious. My daily RPU earnings have dropped to about 10% of what I had been earning for the past year, with no explanation other than a notice that's been on Chitika's website for more than a week now claiming that they're having reporting problems. They seem to be in no hurry to fix these reporting problems. I'm editing this because Ryodan's post was added while I was typing mine. I was getting the same banner ads reappearing as well even though I had opted out of them. How long has it been since most companies realized people don't click on banner ads, and yet one of Chitika's big new ideas for generating revenue is to replace text ads (with proven results) with banner ads that everyone avoids like the plague? Chitika has no direction at all. They promote things that are not even up and running (their old "Premium Publisher" program), they replace working ad formats (RPUs) with formats that don't work (banner ads), and they seem hell bent on coming up with new ad formats that scream "Look at me! I'm an ad!!!" The only ad format they've come up with that actually blends in with the rest of the content on the pages and works is the RPUs and they've apparently abandoned them. Now they're running a promotion claiming to double your income this month up to $100 at the same time they're experiencing reporting problems and their publishers are losing money. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Chitika closes its doors. If they're not a scam, at the very least they're clueless. These guys couldn't run a successful lemonade stand.