Considering Chitika

Its been a week since the firestorm that was the Chitika audit process erupted, and after some very heavy personal disappointment with some of the results, I’ve had some time to reanalise my Chitika returns.

Economics
There is little doubt that some people have been affected far more than others. I know talking to people that some have had cuts in the audit process of upto 90%. I’ve taken a look at my own personal figures at the cut was roughly 10-15% of the actual advertising return (not the referral income). Now, I’ve been using channels for some time so I took a look at what channels were performing and what weren’t, which can also be done through the audited pages as well. Guess what: Chitika still pays well on some sites (audited as well). I’m not at privilege to discuss the b5media returns from Chitika but I can speak generally, and I will say I found similar things as well. Now I’ve written in the past that Chitika works better on product-IT sorts of pages, which I why I never ran them here (except for maybe a few days at first) at The Blog Herald. Looking at my sites, and the b5media sites, the tech related blogs (electronics, gadgets, games…that sort of thing) are still paying well on an eCPM basis compared to Adsense and others. So what I’ve done (and b5media are doing to some extent as well) is removed the Chitika inventory from sites with bad returns, or placed them in less prominent positions, and replaced them with YPN, Adsense or other advertising. I’d note though that this is the same thing I’d do with any advertising, if it doesn’t work for that topic, you move it or remove it, and its not specific to Chitika.

In my case I’m sticking with Chitika for the time being, although I’ll be doing more targeted placements with their eMinimall’s product as opposed to everything across the board. Its good advice for anyone, if it doesn’t work drop it, for any ad placements.