Forum Moderators: skibum
Chitika just announced that they are eliminating "curiosity clicks" from our revenues. Great. Who gets to decide what differentiates a "curiosity click" from an advertiser whose site just sucks and can't convert? Not us, that's for sure.
I spent probably a hundred hours putting up highly targeted ads on most of my pages. CTR and revenues were building nicely, then this. Whack! CTR cut in half, revenues by more than that. And just a casual blog post from them to announce it. Ho hum. Just another scam. Back to YPN!
From the Chitika blog:
To help filter out so-called “curiosity clicks” that typically do not lead to conversions on the merchants’ side, we updated the eMiniMalls units to drive qualified clicks. Hence, eMiniMalls users will notice a dip in the overall click through rate (and hence the overall revenue).
[edited by: martinibuster at 8:15 pm (utc) on Nov. 18, 2005]
[edit reason] Removed link to blog, inserted quote. [/edit]
A few weeks ago they removed the links from the images and now they have removed the links from the titles. Both changes caused a huge drop in both CTR and earnings.
I'm sure Chitika has lost many publishers this week.
Chitika, if you're reading, not a good move at all. You've created the perception that you operate in bad faith.
To help filter out so-called “curiosity clicks” that typically do not lead to conversions on the merchants’ side, we updated the eMiniMalls units to drive qualified clicks. Hence, eMiniMalls users will notice a dip in the overall click through rate (and hence the overall revenue).While we do strongly believe that in the long run everyone will benefit from our efforts to optimize this eMiniMalls (beta) service, we do recognize that in the short term this might lead to potential drops in revenue for some of our publishers. To best compensate for any potential revenue loss, we are issuing a network-wide 10% bonus through the end of November.
...now to get back to removing code...
That is what comes to mind. This debacle isn't going to help their bottom line nor was it introduced at the right time.
Good luck to Chitika!
[edited by: yosaid at 6:45 pm (utc) on Nov. 18, 2005]
I mean, AdSense is a pretty amazing program. Is it plausible that another program could come out of nowhere and pay TEN TIMES as much per click?
I wish Chitika the best, in fact I have joined up and hope to start using them once things stabilize. But I hope they've been legitimately earning those high per-click values from their advertisers, or else the October and November audits are going to be painful.
Chitika just announced that they are eliminating "curiosity clicks" from our revenues.
Maybe Google should try that approach instead of smart pricing. :-)
I would have understood a small drop, or even a moderate drop - but from the very beginning to now, my earnings are 1/6th of what they used to be.
I don't like the way they just make changes with haste and seemingly very little thought. I was a huge supporter in their first month, but waking up to astronomically lower earnings pisses me off.
If you're going to mess with such an important part of the program TELL ME IN ADVANCE so that I can make necessary adjustments to "soften the blow".
What they did may be a necessary change, but not notifying me in advance just threw trust out the window, and our partnership. Now I'll just cross my fingers and hope my last check actually arrives - as I suspect a HUGE publisher fallout.
[edited by: martinibuster at 8:20 pm (utc) on Nov. 18, 2005]
[edit reason] Removed link to blog [/edit]
Chitika just announced that they are eliminating "curiosity clicks" from our revenues. Great. Who gets to decide what differentiates a "curiosity click" from an advertiser whose site just sucks and can't convert? Not us, that's for sure.
That simply wrong, taken out of context and misleading.
And then they discount clicks
The blog does not say they are discounting clicks. They say that "they've updated the eMiniMalls units" i.e. they've changed the design so people are less likely to click by accident. That's it!
And, for that they're paying a 10% bonus. Which they did not need to do. I have no recollection of other contextual programs paying out a bonus because of improvements they made while the program was in beta.
Get a grip folk!
fraud. That is what comes to mind.
Jeez!
Maybe Google should try that approach instead of smart pricing. :-)
If you mean Google should exclude clicks they believe are not made genuinely... they already do. And rightly so. Click tracking often shows a >10% discrepancy between Google's record and webmasters' records of clicks made.
[edited by: oddsod at 7:13 pm (utc) on Nov. 18, 2005]
"What happened to the product links?"
If their advertisers money is not lost by invalid clicks, I supose they will attract more quality advertising clients.
And then publishers will benefit, if we look long-term.
This is just my opinion.
Also, mods - please transfer this thread to some other sub-forum :-)
Regards!
It's called their monthly audit - which took another 30% of my revenue last month.
The 10% kick doesn't even start washing the sour taste of s#itika out of my mouth. It was fun while it lasted.
And those saying this is an overreaction must not have taken a financial hit as a result of Chitika's not communicating with their publishers the changes to come?
But, that's not what the OP was about.. Sweebie suggests that a certain new number of clicks are being discounted for being curiousity clicks. And are discounted purely for that reason.
This is misleading and false. Perhaps a simple mistake on his part which he will clarify after checking out.
The fun thing with Chitika is abysmally low CTR.
That's another thing. A lot of people see higher CTRs with Chitika. And, there's a good reason for that. But, Chitika doesn't suit all sites. If it's not a good match for your site and if you haven't taken the time and trouble to target the ads properly (which, conceded, is a pain when you're used to Adsense) - then you will get low CTRs.
However, the fact that you can target the ads is itself a fantastic opportunity and, on its own, give you a boost of 1000% if you take the time and trouble to do it properly.
Example: A site discussing a certain type of music was getting contextual ads selling an $8 item. The EPC was $0.15. The webmaster went looking on shopping.com and found a lifetime pack from that artist selling for $250 and targeted her ad for that product. You wouldn't even believe if I told you what her EPC went up to. She'd have to make 50 clicks in Adsense to match each one she got in Chitika.
But Adsense works better on other sites/situations.
The Adsense big dogs should fear Google now more than ever because if competition fails, Google's big abuse-prone teeth become sharper. :)
Yesterday the only part of the title text that was clickable was the price/company and now it appear the first part of the title text is clickable - this should bring CTR back a tiny bit.
Google's big abuse-prone teeth
I'm not Google's #1 supporter here but I don't think they set out to abuse anyone.
these scandalous updates from Chitika
What part did you find scandalous?
Having said that, it still sucks that earnings have plummeted. Making about 35% of previous average. Now those ads are no longer worth the ad space on my pages, so I'm staring at another 100 or so hours to remove them all. Such is life in this business, I guess.
