Is Chitika Imploding?

Like everyone else that is posting here - my revenue and impressions of Chitika ads has greatly diminished. Sites that have been online with them for years are now "Pending Review."

And it appears that they do not have enough advertisers to go around.

This maybe due to a great influx of Publishers from YPN. But I am not happy that my loyalty in using their network is being abused because of the new publishers.

I have a sinking feeling that Chitika is about to collapse. Is anyone having improved success with them?

My plan is to give them through May - and if the situation does not improve - they will no longer be part of my revenue system.

 

I totally agree with what you've raised here and I feel exactly the same.
I already started shopping around looking for other alternatives. If someone will find good alternative, please share it here.
The one I found (actually also here on the forum) is: Smowtion
I just started to run ads with them as Chitika alternative URL. So far it is not that good, but this is what they say:

Anyway, you can give a try also. Here is my referral link: https://publisher.smowtion.com/users/signup/sales8
Please note referred members will earn 80% of the revenue share, instead of 60% if you come directly.

 

They took my impressions from around 3k per day to 1-5 per day. Just one to five!

After a support ticket I received a basic too bad too sad. It's incredibly hurtful to know that I've supported them since the beginning, have a testimonial listed on their testimonial page, and now for nothing. They used me to get their impressions up and then I guess decided they were done with me. Not even worth having hte code on teh site anymore.

 

It looks like they are shutting down. 96% drop in my impressions and earnings. I have been their partner since 2005, never faced anything like this. If this continues then RIP Chitika.

 

I had an idea this was going to happen when they changed how LINX went from displaying individual advertisers to a search page and they took down the forum for a so-called 'upgrade/overhaul'. BS!

 

I think they may have a fraud clicks lawsuit pending against them and are trying to cover their as.. I mean, bases.

But yes, from the outside it looks like they are imploding onto themselves. That is really a shame! You would think that they'd be brimming with activity after YPN had given them all their publishers (at least, and maybe even advertisers) on a platter.

They may also be simply overwhelmed by all that new YPN business. Who knows what's going on but for what it's worth, at least my Chitika sales manager is still replying to my emails.

But, really, in a time like this not even a peep at their blog about their issues. I think publishers would appreciate being kept in a loop, even if the news are mostly negative.

 

And you really think they would post anything about problems when they took down the forum before they made the change to LINX to show search results page and not advertisers with no warning? And now removing 'Approved' sites that generated 50,000 & 25,000 impressions last month and saying 'Not approved for Premium ads (not enough user data)' but leaving 'Approved' a site that had 600 impressions! And those two sites get 80-90% of their traffic from the SEs and 95% is US & CA and been online since 1999 and 2002!

 

This exactly what happens to me. 5 of my websites that generated 25k impressions daily are not approved now, after running for almost one year. Only one website left approved, that generates 100 impressions a day with 2 clicks.
I'm personally still waiting and hope they will come back to normal.

 

I signed up for Chitika a couple months ago and shortly after I was approved. The ads lasted for about 2 or 3 days. After that, they stopped displaying. I was never given a reason or answer to my many contacts.

 

Seriously, I'm going to miss my $20 a month from them though.
Sure it isn't much, but it was easy money that I simply transferred from PayPal every month.
What a travesty.
Virtually all of my income from them is gone.

 

They sent me some lame email today, something about review my sites, blah, blah...

I could care less, they have never done anything to impress me, c-ya!

 

I'm going to ditch them soon, I opened a ticket with them 2 days ago and they don't reply. I've noticed that since 27 april I get no more earnings. I run chitika on a revenue sharing site, so all my members are also in the same situation as I am.
The earnings were low (CPM) but now it's nothing.

Tomorrow I'm removing the code, now I'm going to sleep, so they have a few hours to reply or they can go to hell.
And I'll make a blog post about it, so at least I'll get some traffic from their name.

 

Read from this blog: http://bit.ly/clLeX5
You will find a lot of information and even some "unofficial" Chitika responses.

 

I just now deleted all the Chitika code from all my sites.

They are history...