I've written Chitika support and posted in their forum, but they don't seem to be able to answer some basic questions. And no one else but me is asking them. This is weird. It's like the twilight zone or something. 1. Do the premium ad units only show to people who come to my site from search engines? What about the regular traffic and people who come to my site directly? This is a simple question yet the Chitika knowledge base is very vague about it, and they are vague about many things. 2. Do the premium units show ads from the eminimalls and MPU's or not? I thought they rotate them? If not, can I set them as alternate URL's? 3. What happens if you turn off the behavioral targeting? Do visitors then see ads even if they didn't come from search engines? If so, isn't that better? 4. Do any of the ad units use contextual advertising? I've asked these questions and more so many times, but no one there answers them! Chitika is very bizarre and ambiguous.
I called Chitika 5 minutes ago about some questions that I had. I got through straight away and they answered them all. Give them a call!
This should be easy to check - clear out your cookies and come back to the page directly, or open it up in another browser.
Premium ads basically mean that your ads will only show to search engine traffic coming from the U.S. (ads will be showed depending on the search engine search). If a visitor is from anywhere outside the U.S., the ads will simply not show in your website. My suggestion is to check your referer stats and make sure this is a good deal for you. There is a higher CPC for U.S. traffic, but this is only good news if most of your traffic is actually from the U.S.