Chitika shutting down immediately

just got an e-mail that Chitika is shutting down after 15 years.

[LifeinAsia]

Quite a few publishers will be pissed by this part:

Unfortunately, due to termination of our partnership with our biggest exchange partner, no earnings accumulated after March 1st 2019 will be paid out. All earnings after March 1st 2019 have been chargebacked by the exchange and money has been returned to the advertisers.

We used to make a lot of money with them, but the quality of the ads and resulting revenue had been declining over the past few years, and we had pretty much replaced their ads with other feeds on our sites.

It's too bad because I knew well a lot of the people who used to work there.

[mack]

Q: What about earnings for last month and current month ?
A: Unfortunately, due to termination of our partnership with our biggest exchange partner, no earnings accumulated after March 1st 2019 will be paid out. All earnings after March 1st 2019 have been chargebacked by the exchange and money has been returned to the advertisers.

Ouch, that could be painful for some.

Mack.

[LifeinAsia]

BTW, here's their online post [support.chitika.com] about the shutdown.

[csdude55]

I just got the email... effective immediately and without warning, Chitika is closing up shop.

I had tried them as an alternative to Adsense and had dismal results... like pennies on the dollar. But it's relevant to Adsense publishers because that's one less ad network bidding :-(

[edited by: not2easy at 2:50 am (utc) on Apr 18, 2019]
[edit reason] splice cleanup [/edit]

[Selen]

like pennies on the dollar

By the end of this year, pennies on the dollar for display advertising will be considered good deal for an average publisher...

[tangor]

Wonder if this might be a future for other companies shutting down in the future as the large get larger and the small are gobbled up?

[bhukkel]

I had Chitika as a backup supplier for a few years and made some nice earnings in 2016. The last years the earnings were declining and i removed them in 2018.

[AlexB77]

I wonder if this has something to do with G changing the bidding strategies announcement regarding the second price bidding? If yes then this can open exit doors for many similar networks.

[matbennett]

The worrying part is that publishers are not going to be paid:

Q: What about earnings for last month and current month ?
A: Unfortunately, due to termination of our partnership with our biggest exchange partner, no earnings accumulated after March 1st 2019 will be paid out. All earnings after March 1st 2019 have been chargebacked by the exchange and money has been returned to the advertisers.

[edited by: not2easy at 4:39 pm (utc) on Apr 18, 2019]
[edit reason] splice cleanup [/edit]

[Chrispcritters]

I suspect this is the beginning of a massive consolidation cycle in the ad network space.

[tangor]

@Chrispcritters ... I suspect you are right. :)

Evolution of the web (advertising). Consumption of others, or killing their biz--same result. Actually, this is pretty much the way biz has worked for a few centuries!

[sday]

Publishers not getting paid is never good for the industry as a whole it harms trust.

[Edge]

Never worked on my vertical - ads garbage and off target. Tried for several months and shuttered them - never got paid for what we earned.

[JS_Harris]

I think display ads in general are not what they once were, which is probably in part due to mobile taking over. I gave Chitika a run on one site about a year ago and it managed about 5% of what a couple of my other options can do so I pulled them off after 3 weeks.

Who was their biggest partner, Google? I don't have time to go read all the press right now.

[LifeinAsia]

Who was their biggest partner, Google?

It was Yahoo back when I was heavily using them. Not sure about recently.

[RhinoFish]

This news is bananas!
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