Checking my results this morning from yesterday, I noticed via my channel tracking that certain product's CPCs have plummeted - we are talking 1/5th or so of what they earned the day before. Anybody else see this? If this continues I doubt I'll keep running the ads - it is just not worth it. I don't think this relates to geography (IP tracking/customer value) since there were multiple clicks and none earned the value of the day before. And these are unaudited results - it can only get worse.
First people complain about Chitika kicking them out, not paying, etc. Now payouts go down. I was approved but I hesitate to even make them my Adsense alternative at this point.
My CPCs have been fine and stable over the past few weeks. Even the CTR is pretty constant. aeronautic, are you basing your statement on one or two clicks ? It is a known fact that the CPCs for Europe are much less than the CPCs for US (probably even 1/5th as you say). So if you got 1-2 clicks on one day from US and then 1-2 clicks the next from Europe, you will see that effect. Jim, Chitika is not an Adsense alternative. It is a Adsense-compatible solution that complements the adsense check. Most of us here use it as gravy above what we make from Adsense. If your site is about products, you will have good success (some people have even replaced Adsense with Chitika). If your site is not about products, dont even bother. You will be lucky if you get 2-3 clicks a week. I received my payment yesterday by Paypal. And reading from their blog, it looks like all January payments were processed.
Thank you for the info, but I honestly don't want a complement - I want something to display when Google has no ads to serve. It sounds like chitika is not for me as I do ESL and travel (international audiences).
mottebonk, i base it on my hyper vigilent stats on specific targets. i'm well aware of the geo differences and made references to same in my original post. i also made references to the number of clicks in my data. what appears to be the case, at least based on yesterday's data, is that the bids/competition for these terms/products is/are gone. however, to chitika's credit, i did get paid - but i don't think the "audited" numbers are very legit.
I run same chitika campaigns for fiew months. I noticed, or, better, Iam experiencing changing in cpc on daily basis. I have solid number of visitors and clicks. And that change can affect earnings in good percent at the end of the month.
I noticed the latest drop starting on 2006-02-23. CPC has dipped by 30% since then. Highest CPC's were in late November, about 3 times (300%!) higher than today's :-(
I have noticed some drop in CPC with Chitika but it is still above the average that I recieve with Adsense on my classifieds site.
Just to update, my numbers are way down still. In fact, two days ago with normal traffic I got zero clicks - that has not happened in, I don't know, something like 5 months or so.
well, to my pleasant surprise, yesterday some key product keywords generated just about the same cpc as the earlier higher numbers which attracted me to chitika in the first place. maybe things are starting to steady?
It is all about the advertisers. The CPC has been entirely steady for me when advertising one specific product. $0.24/click... steady for about 45 days. Then the product is released it the CPC climbs slowly and steadily to $0.30/click. Entirely predictable and steady; no fluctuation based on the network. I think the fluctuation you might see is caused because there are relatively few advertisers using Chitika compared to something like Adsense (which ummm isn't very steady in it's CPC either).
The Hoff, I've been talking (ranting?) about some single product ads too. That's what had me po'd or puzzled. I agree with you that the CPC must be based on the number of advertisers in the mix trying for those clicks. What concerned me was that they must have left Chitika like so many publishers due to the bad publicity, thus the few (if any) left were able to snap up my products (keyword specific single item ads) for nada. As indicated in my last post, things seemed to level off a bit. Checking my stats from yesterday just now I made the same amount (both total and CPC) as the day before, so the small amount of data suggests things are more stable.
Hmmmm. Very suspicious. Since the first of the year, with steady traffic, only one day has had zero clicks. And after this late production of the stats, which finally came in, yesterday seems to be number 2. Something smells wrong.
I had normal clicks and normal referral clicks (actually a bit higher CPC on the referral clicks yesterday).