Chitika Review

One of the biggest ad networks out there and a good alternative to Google Adsense. Like Google Adsense, Chitika serves ad contextually, but unlike Adsense, it serves ad based on the search queries. Chitika has an unique algorithm to identify what a user searches and accordingly change the ads served even though the content and ads might not be related to one another.

I/ Overview

So what does "Chitika" mean? When Chitika co-founders, Venkat Kolluri and Alden DoRosario left Lycos in 2003 to start their own company, they sought a name that would suggest the speed with which its customers would be able to put up ads on their Web sites. Chitika, which means "snap of the fingers" in Telugu (a South Indian language), captured this sentiment and Chitika Inc. was born. Chitika introduced its online advertising service in January, 2004.

To understand why Chitika is a good advertising network you need to understand the method with which it displays ads to visitors to your site. Chitika does not check the content of your web pages to display relevant ads, they scan the search queries that were used to enter the site. By just looking at, for example “Used car New York”, Chitika is able to display extremely relevant ads, sometimes even more than Google Adsense. By displaying relevant ads they are able to pay the publisher top CPC rates, because the ROI for the advertisers is very high (advantage of content-relevant ads). An example: Dating ads on a website about insurance will most likely result in absolutely no conversions. It's very simple to test how relevant your Chitika ads will be. Just go to any website that runs Chitika ads and append “#chitikatest=Used car New York” to the end of the URL, press enter and reload the website. You should then see advertisements about whatever you entered, in my case Used car New York.

When I first had a look on the default layout of Chitika's ads I was amazed. I previously made a post about psychological Adsense optimization where I talked about colors and all that. The layout is extremely important as it decides whether the user clicks on the ad or doesn't. Chitika offers all methods of optimizing your ads, changing the title color, text color, border color and URL color. That's of course what Google offers as well but there is one significant difference. Google's TOS disallows placing images next to your advertisements because they think that that could somehow encourage the user to click the ads. What's the big deal? That only means more money. The visitor sees the image and then automatically focuses the ad unit next to it resulting in more clicks. That's a clever trick which Chitika automatically implements. Check out the picture,  Chitika automatically displays relevant ads next to the pictures! Amazing, I was stunned when I saw that the first time. That of course means more revenue for you.



So, is Chitika good for you? Should you give it a try? If Google Adsense is for you, I do not see any reasons not to give Chitika a try. It has become immensely popular among webmasters and we have seen many top bloggers and websites serving Chitika Ads on their websites. Based on my experience with using Chitika – it pays lower for websites in technical or related niche when compared to Adsense. On the other hand, in general niche websites (like entertainment, music, shopping, review etc.), Chitika has better chances to perform well as it has more chances to serve relevant ads to users from the search.

II/ Ad Details & Rates

(Images taken from Chitika's Official Blog).

1. Chitika Premium

Chitika Premium displays ads to visitors that reach a page directly from a major search engine. They detect the search query used by the visitor and then return ads that best match that search query. Returning well-targeted, highly relevant ads should result in a higher Click-through rate. This is how the ads monetize the "second click". All Chitika Premium ads are Pay per click (PPC) and are promoted by Chitika as their best performing ad product for publishers based on effective Cost per impression (eCPM).

Chitika Premium ad units are 100% compatible with Google AdSense. According to Chitika the Chitika Premium ad units do not conflict with the Google Adsense terms of use because the ad units are not contextual and the ad units do not look like Google Adsense ads.

2. Chitika Local Ad Exchange

Chitika launched their Local Ad Exchange (LAX) in July, 2010 with the intent of bringing together search-targeting and local advertising. LAX offerings include a local interactive map populated with advertisements.

3. Chitika Mobile

Launched as part of the above-mentioned LAX product, Chitika Mobile is a feature that allows standard Chitika Premium ads to change dynamically into mobile-designed ads based on a user's user agent.

III/ Summary

Ad Types	CPM and CPC
Format	Banner, Inline, Mobile
Allow Adult Contents	No
Min Payout	$10 (Paypal), $50 (check)
Payment Frequency	NET-30
Payment Method	Paypal, Check
Country	US

IV/ Payment Proof

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