Chitika (the #2 way that I make money blogging) have come out with a handy new ad unit option for publishers wanting to monetize traffic arriving on their blog from search engines - the ‘mega unit’ premium ad unit. This ad unit is a 550×255 pixel sized ad - it’s not small but their testing has shown some pretty impressive results with publishers reporting big increases in earnings as a result of using this rather than their smaller ad units. How do Chitika Premium Ad Units Work? * As with all of Chitika’s ‘Premium’ ad unit range these ads only show to US/Canadian readers arriving on your site as a result of a search on Google or one of the other search engines. * If the reader is a loyal reader that is coming from your RSS feed or another site OR they are a reader from outside the US/Canada they won’t see them (note: there is an option to have an alternative ad shown for non search traffic if you wish but I don’t choose this option and have the ad collapse and not show at all). * The ads showing on the unit relate to the search that the person arriving on your site is doing - this significantly increases the chance that they’ll find the ad relevant to them and click the ad. * The ads can be customized to have different colors and fonts. * Chitika’s testing finds that this ad unit is converting best if you slot it above your content (as you’d expect) or below content (above or below comments would work). Remember this is only showing to search engine visitors so an aggressive ad placement won’t annoy loyal readers. * If this mega ad unit is too big or the wrong shape for you - Chitika’s premium ad units come in a large range of other sizes. You can see the add unit size options here (you can also check out what kinds of ads will show for different search terms on that page also). How do they perform? I have only started testing this new mega unit sized ad on my blog but have had a lot of success with other sizes of premium ad units for a long time now - I fully expect to see some great results with the larger ad unit. I have a smaller ad unit showing on my photography blog above posts and have added a mega unit below posts to see how they perform. What I particularly like about the premium ad units is that unlike previous Chitika ad units these convert on sites of all kinds of topics. Their previous ad units were very much suited to product/gadget related sites - but these ad units are converting for all kinds of sites and topics. In a newsletter that Chitika sent to their publishers today they are reporting some fairly amazing results from other publishers who have been testing this ad unit. Here’s a screenshot (my highlighting): I’m sure results will vary from site to site but at the very least I think they’re an option to be testing if you’re looking to make money from your blog. ADSENSE IS BEHIND.......
yep large units works better than the smaller ones, but nothing will work good on chitika because they only shows the ads to US/canada visitors
I have found the mega-unit works best at the end of an article. So put AdSense at the top of the article. Then, instead of putting AdSense again at the bottom, (bottom ads pay low anyway) place the Chitika Mega Unit. Due to the pictures next to the text ads and the highlight of what the user typed in, the click-thrus are massive. Not only that, you'll probably get more $$$ for your clicks then you would with AdSense due to the fact that you're not displaying a second low-paying AdSense ad. Instead, you're displaying your first Chitika ad on the page. Try it.