Chitika, which is still in beta, has mad a few changes recently that have affected some publishers. While some report an increase or no change at all in CTR many publishers have reported a large CTR drop which, of coarse, affects the publishers overall income or revenue. In my opinion, …
It is now 3:30 PM EST and I as well as several others have noted that their Chitika reports have not yet updated with yesterdays (November 13th) stats. No official word yet on why but I bet it has something to do with all the new channels 
Update: Stats were …
Looking for a simple hack to determine the top paying keywords for your site that is using Chitika eMinimalls? Well look no more! This hack extends your existing channel name(s) to include the name of prduct that was clicked. This will still give you statistics to track an interactive …
During my daily visit to Chitika I noticed a new Support area for
publishers where they included sub-topics that include
Chitika News: Company News and announcmentsDownload Library: Which already a couple of plugins for MT and WP
Knowledgebase: Catagorized helpful information on Chitika and eMiniMall
topics Many topics …
Now that channels have been implemented in the reports area at Chitika tracking ad performance is now a big priority for me as well as many other publishers. Being able to track performance is very important to your overall success as a publisher so the fact that Chitika has this …
Over the past few weeks I’ve been a part of a beta testing program of a new ad format for Chitika’s eMiniMalls.
Chitikais a new type of Pay Per Click ad program that many webamsters will find quite profitable for their websites. You’ve probably even seen them around the web by now , they come in a range of sizes but usually have a picture of a product and then some tabs running across the top that say ‘Description’, ‘Best Deals’, ‘Reviews’ and ‘Search’. As you hover the cursor above these tabs they change what information the ad shows.
How do they work?
- Ads pay on a per click(PPC) basis. The value of the clicks depends upon the product being featured.
- left in default mode - mini-malls are non contextual ads (this is helpful when it comes to running them in conjunction with Adsense - more information on this below).
- ads can be set to be contextual and to target site specific keywords (ie they look at your webpage and use it to find ads that are most relevant to it’s content)
How Profitable are they?
Overall - I’ve been beta testing mini-malls for 2 weeks now and am quite happy with them overall. They certainly don’t out perform Adsense for me - but my overall earnings are very promising. Especially when you take into consideration that I have yet to place them on every page I own and have not spent much time optimizing them yet and you’ll see that they have some real potential. (some say that they are outperforming Adsense for them).
Cost per Click - Very very good. The first day I added mini malls I pretty much just slapped the code up there and saw the average amount for each click was being payed I was quite amazed. They are considerably higher than my average click value on Google’s Adsense - some days they are 5 or 6 times higher. I’ve talked to a couple of other webamsters using them and they report anything from 3 times higher to 10 times higher click values than Adsense. This is the definate strength of Chitika mini-malls.
Click Through Rate - The percentage of people clicking on eMiniMalls ads is considerably lower than what I receive via Adsense. This is probably for a number of reasons.
Poor Optimization - This is partly my fault. I’ve just not had time to really optimize the ads properly. It is also partly because they are not currently offering channels to track ad performance on different blogs/categories/positions. As a result if I were to try to optimize the ads now I have no way of tracking the results. Channels are a feature that will be added shortly however so I’m expecting to be able to increase my CTR somewhat.
Average Ad matching - Chitika are still working on how they match ads with content. Ad relevancy seems to be a bit of a problem on some posts. I know this because I have seen some products that just don’t show up on pages where I’d expect them to. Hopefully they’ll continue to develop their algorithm and find ways of making ads even more relevant.
Lower Numbers of Ads - I’m suspecting that Chitika has a lower number of ads than Adsense to select from to run on sites using mini-malls. This means that sometimes ads can be a little irrelevant to your content which would decrease CTR also.
Reports - Emini-malls are in beta at present so don’t expect too much in the reporting and statistic yet. At this stage they just update at the end of each day and give you some basic stats under the four headings of - Date, Impressions, Clicks and Revenue. These stats are what they call ‘unaudited’ - which means they haven’t taken anything off the total that they suspect to be click fraud or ‘dodgy’ clicks. They ‘audit’ you at this stage once per month (they have indicated that this will happen daily at some point in the future). I was only in the system for three days of last month but the auditing brought my ‘unaudited’ figures back by about 10% of what they were. Clicks are audited by some secret process that includes multiple or repeated clicks, traffic from bots and spiders as well as traffic coming from certain countries like China or Korea.
I’m not too impressed by the auditing feature. While I understand why its there I can see that this will be the cause of some tension between Chitika and Publishers. I’m sure Adsense has some sort of system in place that does something similar - but they are big enough to build it in as a real time feature so that publishers just don’t know what they lose.
I know from my conversations with Chitika staff that the reporting system will be undergoing significant improvements in the coming weeks and months.
Ad Formats - They currently offer 10 different size formats in some pretty standard sizes. Overall the options are pretty good. They also allow you to make some changes to the design of your ads by changing colors of borders, title and text to match your page/site theme colors.
Payment - Payment is via Paypal in US Dollars at the start of every month - around 30 days after the end of the month you’re being paid for. You need to reach a minimum of $10 to get a payment.
Can Mini-Malls be used in conjunction with Adsense? - Most people I talk to about mini-malls asks this - it’s important as most publishers will want to use them in conjunction with one another.
At first Google said ‘no’ you can’t use them for two reasons:
The follow up pointed out two things.
The replysaid that they were sorry for making a mistake and that Chitika mini-mall ads can be used in conjunction with Adsense IF they are set to be non contextual.
Quoted from adsense:
“Yes, you can use the Chitika products that rely on keywords selected by
you as opposed to your site’s content, on your site in addition to Google
ads.”
I know of several who have had this same conversation with Google with the same results.
English Sites only - at this point they are in beta test and only accepting Engine sites into the program. While this is sad for non English sites I guess they have to start somewhere. Hopefully they’ll widen it later at some point.
All in all - I’m very pleased with Chitika’s mini-malls. They have loads of potential. I look forward to the future of this program.
I’ve also seen them producing very relevant ads on various websites. I’ve also heard a couple of publishers who were so impressed with mini-malls that they’ve ditched Adsense all together as they were able to earn significantly more from Chitika.
You can apply to be a part of the eMiniMalls beta test at Chitika Mini Malls Sign Up.
Disclaimer: the links to Chitika in this post are affiliate links - if you sign up using these links I earn a small amount as a commission. It does not impact what you earn from Chitika but rather is paid by Chitika. While these links are affiliate links I genuinely believe in the product and have pointed out both its benefits and weaknesses.