I received an email from Chitika recently, explaining that they will now offer a new version of the premium ads, which they are labeling “select ads.”
What do Chitika Select Ads Do? What is the Difference Between Select Ads VS Premium Ads?
Select ads can now be displayed to non-search traffic visitors. This is a big change over the old premium ads, which usually only appeared when the visitor was referred to your site via search engines.
According to Chitika, they are using a new “click-prediction technology”, and they will display Select ads on your site when there is a higher chance the ad will be clicked. In the same email, Chitika estimated that this should increase publisher’s click income by as much as 5-10% right off the bat.
Another good things is that Chitika also doesn’t require publishers to update their ad code (javascript), the changes will take place automatically (unless the publisher opts-out), and the newer ad technology will begin to appear on pages on March 8th, and slowly take over the older premium format.
And just in case anyone is wondering, yes, you can still use Chitika and Adsense together on the same page.
Is This a Good Move on Chitika’s Part?
I think it is. I think they needed this move to compete more seriously with other ad companies. At this time, I don’t run Chitika on any of my blogs, but I did experiment with both Chitika, Adsense, and Kontera simultaneously. My experiment was that it seemed to decrease overall earnings compared to when I had Adsense alone. The big reason is because on one of my blogs, I get relatively higher paying clicks, but with Chitika the clicks were much lower.
Also, I may run the experiment again in the future using only Chitika and Adsense. I think Kontera was a huge reason for the dip in overall earnings (there were several $0.01-0.03 clicks!). I think Kontera has a great company and nice people, but I feel their ads are more intrusive and tend to pay lower clicks (at least for me).
Chitika does have one thing going for them, and that is their unique ability to target the search terms, which I believe probably leads to higher click-through-rates. Adsense also does a great job of matching contextual ads to the content, however, Chitika may be slightly more accurate since it can detect what they have been directly searching.
That being said, I still recommend Chitika as an ad company, and I would gladly experiment and consider using them in the future. I think they do offer a different ad experience which is different from typical PPC companies.
However, at this time, I am going to focus on Adsense, paid/sponsored posts, and some freelance writing projects. Chitika still needs to work out a few issues (one being the auditing time–I check Adsense earnings every hour or two, and I couldn’t stand having to wait a whole day for Chitika’s report). But I think any blogger should try them out and experiment with them. Especially if you have a site that gets lower Adsense CTR’s, or low paying clicks.