Chitika appearing inside AdSense -- display problems...

First, a little introduction...

Google allows other ad networks to bid for and display their ads inside AdSense. Competing ads will appear instead of AdSense only if those ads will have a higher publisher payout.

If you have an AdSense account, go to AdSense Setup tab and choose Ad Review Center. Scroll all the way down. There is an option there to block individual or all ad networks from placing their ads inside AdSense.

Now, to my specific problem...

I've seen Chitika ads appear in ad slots reserved for AdSense but, strangely, only when I am using a Firefox. I've never seen AdSense replaced with Chitika when I used IE, Safari or Chrome. Here is what's happening...

I go to some page on my site and after it's loaded, all Chitika ads are displayed in slots allocated to Chitika and all Google ads are in the slots allocated to AdSense. Now, if I hit refresh (sometimes 1 refresh is sufficient, sometimes I need to refresh several times), 1 to 3 AdSense units are populated with Chitika ads.

Now, it wouldn't be a problem if Chitika ad units were displayed in AdSense units of the same size but I've seen a 300x250 Chitika ad unit displayed inside a 160x600 AdSense ad unit, a 300x250 Chitika ad unit inside a 336x280 AdSense unit and so on...

It looks ugly and even if they would pay more than AdSense under regular circumstances, no one will ever click on a 300x250 Chitika ad that's squeezed inside a 160x600 AdSense ad unit.

Visit http://www.puppy-training-solutions.com/chitika.html for screenshots that illustrate what I described above. By the way, I've seen the same problem on other sites that use both Chitika and AdSense.

At first, I couldn't understand why Chitika ads were appearing inside AdSense but Chitika support provided me with this answer:

"This is actually because we have started buying ad placements through other resources, the Chitika ad is displaying ads through other ad services through things like auction networks."

Since I didn't like how 300x250 ads looked inside a 160x600 area and Google provides an option to block individual ad networks from placing ads inside AdSense, I blocked Chitika on 5/21 around 7 PM.
Well, it's almost 8 PM on 5/23 and I still see Chitika ads appearing inside AdSense.

Did anyone else experience anything similar to this?

Ed

P.S. Have been trying to sign in to my Chitika account for the last hour but the request is timing out. Wondering if they are still in business and if I will get my commissions

 

Yes, I've seen something similar. Don't have much time to investigate thoroughly but it may be a glitch caused by both Chitika and AdSense using the same <div> IDs (or class names) in their CSS. Also, I've seen AdSense ads appearing in a <div> reserved for Facebook comments - I believe for the same reason. Not much you can do - clearly a Firefox bug. Or, rather dirty CSS code writing by both companies - clearly, if your CSS is going to appear on thousands of sites, you're going to have to come up with some unique class names or IDs, don't use names like #ads or #button.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I was also beginning to think it was some kind of bug. But I am surprised it exists because these kind of problems are pretty visible and easy to catch.

My ticket with Chitika is still open and I am waiting what they are going to tell me next. To be fair, I brought up several bugs to Chitika's attention and they did fix them. Let's see what happens with this one...

 

I did not approve chitika in adsense instead of placing it directly, no problems from me

 

The problem that I described appears even when Chitika is blocked in AdSense. Also, it's happening only in Firefox...

As I mentioned in my initial post, after the page is loaded for the first time, everything looks fine. But after I refresh the page (sometimes just once, sometimes several times), I've seen Chitika ads appearing inside slots reserved for AdSense (no, I did not specify Chitika as alternate ads for AdSense).

Also, I've seen the problem on some other sites that display both, Chitika and AdSense

Since I was only able to observe it in Firefox, don't know if the problem is because of Chitika or Firefox.

Would appreciate if anyone who uses both AdSense and Chitika could describe what they see after refreshing (several times) their pages in Firefox.

 

That is too bad, it seems review feature does not work. You should contact Google adsense team to let them know about this