Looking at my Chitika stats for the last three days, I am sure Chitika has reduced CPC by around 50% Anyone else noticed this ?
Since Chitika pays a flat percentage (60%) of what they make per click then Chitika didn't reduce the CPC, rather the advertisers of the products displayed in your ads reduced their bid amount.
If I said that my CPC has increased 50% in the past week does that mean a good sign of things to come for Chitika? No. I'm one publisher with one report that for the particular products I'm targeting advertisers have increased their bids. Thus I disagree that one person reporting a reduced CPC doesn't indicate the sky is falling for Chitika.
I did observe an interesting thing in my stats. On one day, I got 4 clicks and high cpc and made X amount. The next day I got 12 clicks and low cpc (same ads and keywords) and made less than X amount. Do the same ads carry different bids on different days or at different times? Thanks, Gamehouse
Venkat, the CEO of Chitika explained this to me. I published the email exchange on my blog. http://www.kbcafe.com/adwords/?guid=20051209093056 Basically, he says that they no longer count clicks for non-participating countries in the unaudited results as of December 1st.
Certainly. It is up to the advertiser to set their bids and often advertisers might adjust their maximum bid for different days and sometimes even at different times during the day. For example, one advertiser I know adjusts his bids so that they are higher during hours when the telephones are being answered. He knows that his website converts more when people can call and ask questions, then go back to the website and place an order. When the telephones are closed, people with questions need to wait until the phones open to place an order and sometimes they will just purchase from somewhere else. Thus his maximum bid is higher during daytime hours and is lower during the night and on weekends. This is an important part of serving ads as a publisher. I look at trends of how much different networks (AdSense, YPN, Chitika, etc) pay on average on different days and adjust which ads I display on which day accordingly to maximize my revenue.
I tip my hat to you sir. That must be a difficult job. Where do you get all that info? From your own sites? Or a secret corner of the net? Do tell On topic, I have noticed some clicks go up, and some go down. It's just how things work. I'm not sure how I am doing at the moment since December's unsopprted clicks arent showing like before, but I'm sure I'm doing ok since my alternate ads URL is taking a beating
Data from my own sites. Every day I add the data from the previous day into a database. I track the website, ad position, which network, impressions, clicks, and revenue. Yes, it is a lot of work.
Thanks a lot for the detailed info. I guess the issue whether the day is weekday or weekend effects too. Right now I am concentrating on getting more traffic to my sites and once that gets to a good level, then I will work on optimizing the ads more. Gamehouse