Why isn't my campaign showing stats?

Make Sure You Have Activated Your Account. Chitika is not able to approve or launch your campaign until you have activated your account by entering your billing information. Please click here to login and update your Billing Summary.

The daily performance data for your campaigns will start appearing in your Campaign Summary 24 hours after your campaign has started running in the Chitika Network. You can sort your performance data by date, campaign, ad group, or variation.

If you campaign status is listed as 'Started' in your Campaign Summary, this means your campaign has launched, but may not have generated any traffic (impressions or clicks). Please see suggestions below on how to increase the amount of traffic generated by your ad.

Expand your keyword list to increase the visibility of your ad among search driven traffic in the Chitika Network.
To help your campaign generate traffic you may want to add additionally relevant keywords to your current list, using the 'Edit Targeting' feature for your campaign. Your Chitika Account Manager can work with you to find related high volume keywords for the Chitika network that target similar traffic. This will increase the coverage of your ad and help you reach potential customers in the Chitika network that you might have otherwise missed.

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How do I request a refund for Chitika advertising charges?

To request a refund first click here to access Chitika Advertiser Support.

Open a support ticket with subject, ‘Advertiser Refund Request’, and include:

• Your Chitika Advertiser account user name
• Email address used to create and verify your account.
• The refund amount you are requesting, and transaction date.
• Detailed reason as to why you are requesting said refund.

A support representative will respond to this ticket within 24 hours, either to confirm the refund has been processed, or to request more information regarding your claim.

You can view all of your Chitika payment transactions in your account’s ‘Billing Summary‘.

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How do I contact an account rep to discuss my campaigns?

• Please issue a detailed support ticket to Chitika’s Advertiser Support team, including your advertiser account user name and the email addressed used to create your account.
• Your account rep will respond to your inquiry within 24 hrs.
• Click here to issue a support ticket.
• You can also reach Chitika’s Support Team by phone: (866) 441 7203 x985.

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How do I set my campaign costs and daily budgets?

You are in control of setting:

• The maximum CPC or CPM rate for all ad groups within your campaigns.
  
• The maximum daily budget for each of your campaigns.
  
• The maximum daily budget for your Chitika account (*budget cap for all active campaigns within your account).

Chitika suggests you test out different CPC/CPM bids and daily budgets to optimize your campaigns in-line with your traffic quality/conversion goals, and/or target CPA. Want more info on maximizing your campaign ROI? Chitika Advertiser | Tracking Conversions & ROI

Rates:

CPC Campaigns: If you are a Chitika’s CPC/PPC (cost per click/lead) advertiser you will accrue advertising costs only when users clicks on your ad. You are charged based on the CPC bid you assign to each ad group within your campaign/s.

CPM Campaigns: If you are a Chitika CPM (cost per million ad views), you are charged for each time you ad is displayed, based on the CPM bid you set for each ad group within your campaigns.

Campaign-Level Budget Caps:

After you decide on your maximum CPC or CPM rate for each ad group, you will need to decide on the daily budget for each campaign.
Choosing the recommended amount ensures maximum ad exposure evenly throughout the day. You can lower or raise this amount to make sure you reaching the perfect amount, and quality, of traffic to meet your ROI goals.

We recommend you work with your Chitika account rep to set effective bids/rates and campaign budgets. Contact your account manager by clicking here.

NOTE: The sum of budget caps for each of your campaigns equals your total daily account budget limit. Chitika will stop running all campaigns in your account on a given day once your set daily budget cap is reached. Your budget will be refreshed at days end, and so forth.

NOTE: You will not be charged daily, or in accordance with the daily campaign-level budget limit you assign for your account. See credit limits info, below.

• Want more info? Chitika Advertiser | Pricing & Billing Guide

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My campaign is getting impressions, but how can I increase the Clickthrough rate (CTR)?

Make sure your keywords accurately represent the message of your ad.
Some advertisers tend to select keyword terms that are known to be popular among browsers, but are often not as effective in promoting your ad message or call to action.

Expand your keyword list with related keywords.
As mentioned above, you can work with your Chitika Account Manager to expand your keyword list with related keywords* to increase visibility among search driven users in the Chitika Network.

*Chitika's Related Keyword System works to find high volume keywords relative to the Chitika Network, that are proven to target similar search traffic as your original keyword list.

Make sure your landing page is relevant.
Every click counts, and you will risk losing customers if the page they on does not feature or offer information for the product or service promoted in your ad. Make sure the destination URL set for you ad is directly related to your ad.

Make sure your ad promotes your product or service accurately and clearly.
Make sure your text or banner ad clearly states the message you want to send to potential customers. Boldly stating promotions, benefits, or features associated with your product or service, along with a clear call-to-action, will encourage clicks and potentially sales.

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How can I improve my campaign's conversion rate?

Define your ROI.

• ROI = Profit* / Total Costs *(revenue - cost)
  Evaluate what a conversion is worth in terms of your business and how much you are looking to spend on marketing in order to determine your Cost-per-acquisition (CPA).
• CPA = Total Marketing Spend / Total Number Of Conversions

Depending on your conversion goals, you can set the most effective CPC or CPM rate. It's always smart to test out multiple budgeting strategies to maximize the ROI of your Chitika campaigns.

Try out different daily budgets for your campaigns, and/or assign different CPC/CPMs rates for your ad groups, and/or adjust your ad variations to find the best targeting strategy for your campaign. around with your creatives using the 'Edit Budget' feature in your Campaign Management Interface or create a few new test campaigns to add to the mix. Please keep in mind:

• If your CPA is less than the value of a conversion you may choose to increase your CPC or CPM bid to potentially generate more traffic or clicks.
• If your CPA is more than the value of a conversion, you will probably want to decrease your bids and work with your Chitika Account Manager to further optimize your targeting strategy to make sure you are reaching the right users online.

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How does Chitika's search marketing program (SBM) differ from AdWords, or other search marketing (SEM) programs?

Same Targeting. Same Audience. New Traffic Source.

• Chitika's search marketing program extends the efforts of your current SEM campaign, implementing the same keyword-based targeting method, and giving you visibility with the same intent driven search traffic you reach on the search engines, but in a different terrain.
• Your search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns (ie; Google AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search) ads are shown to users who are specifically searching in a search engines using one of your keywords and your ads appear as 'sponsored ad listings' on the top and to the side of the search engine results page (SERP).
• Your Chitika search marketing campaigns, Search Behavior Marketing (SBM), use the exact keyword-based targeting method that is implemented in your SEM campaigns, and is specifically designed to drive similarly high converting intent driven search traffic, but your ads are featured to users in our content network; meaning, your ads appear on content websites.

Essentially, your Chitika SBM ads are targeted to users based on the keyword they just used to search in a major search engine before entering our network; meaning you are targeting your SEM audience after this audience has moved beyond the search engine results page (SERP) and has entered sites in our content network of over 33,000 content rich websites.

Adwords-like program, Adwords-like targeting in a content network?

• Chitika enables advertisers to target search traffic in our content network. We are able to offer this because our content network of over 33,000 sites, drives over 550 million search impressions per month (that's more than ask.com! And gaining on microsoft ® ), and our cutting edge behavioral targeting technology works to tag, track, and target to users coming into our network based on the keywords they recently searched with in a major search engine (such as Google, or Yahoo).

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Should I use my exact AdWords keyword lists for my Chitika Campaigns?

• Yes, using the same keywords that you use to target users with your AdWords (SEM) campaigns in your Chitika campaigns means you will target the same, or similar users or users driven by the same search 'intent' in Chitika's content network.
• With this said, make sure the keyword lists you assign in both your SEM and Chitika SBM campaigns are tightly aligned on the ad group level, and reflect the user intent you are conveying through your ad text

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How can I improve my campaign's CTR?

Chitika's system optimizes your campaign's using quality score indexing to show better-performing ads more often; this ensures:

• Users in the Chitika network see relevant, quality ads.

• Chitika advertisers receive highly qualified, high converting leads.

Your Chitika ads are indexed based on a quality score, determined by relevance; namely CTR.

Ads with higher quality scores are more likely to show in our network than those with low quality scores. Essentially, your ability to drive high converting traffic is contingent on your ads CTR.

Optimization tip:
Do not mislead your prospective customers! Make sure all your ads are relevant and have a clear call to action, aimed at landing a conversion. A quick and simple way to make your ads relevant, and improve your CTR, is to:

• Write Effective Ad Text, and use a relevant display and destination URLs.

• Test To Find The Best Ad: Create and test out multiple ad variations within your ad groups, and monitor the CTR to find out which ad(/ads) text works to attract the most customers to your site.

• Chitika’s system will automatically show your stronger ads more frequently, improving your quality score, increasing your ability to drive the most relevant leads to your business.

• Click here for Chitika’s Guide to Writing Effective Ads.

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How can I improve my campaign's conversion rate?

• First off, keep your eye on the profit: Profit is an inverse relation--> how many clicks your ad gets multiplied by how much you net per click.
Click here to read Chitika's Guide to Advertiser ROI.
• Chitika's system automatically optimizes to show better-performing ads more often; your campaign's ability to drive high quality, high converting traffic is contingent on your the quality score of your ads, reflected by CTR.
The first steps to improving your campaign's conversion rate are to improve your campaign's quality score, and to place the Chitika conversion tracker on your site. Click here for Chitika's Guide to placing your Conversion Tracker. 1. Optimize your keyword list. Remember, your Chitika search ads are targeting users who are searching for YOU. When a user enters a keyword into a search engine they are signaling an intent, an interest, and asking a question. When you assign keywords to your ad group make sure you ad text is relevant to the user's intent; make sure your ad is answering the question the user is asking.

Example: Test out and evaluate the performance of different ad groups within your campaigns to see which keywords are yielding the highest CTR, and conversion rate. Cut out poor performing ads and focus your ad spend on high performing ads and keywords. Your Chitika account manager will work with you to optimize your keyword list to perform best relative to specific traffic quality and volume in the Chitika Network. 2. Improve your ad text.

• Put yourself in the mindset of your customers to determine the best ad text to catch your prospective customers' attention and drive conversions.

Remember, while your SEM campaigns ads are shown to users on the search engine results page who are specifically searching for results using one of your keywords, in Chitika's SBM program, your ads are keyword-targeted and featured to users on sites in Chitika's content network, based on the keyword the user search with before entering our network. Effectively, you are targeting to users with the same search driven 'intent' achieved through your SEM campaign, but once these users have moved into the next stage of his/her 'search'.

• By targeting your ads to users after they have searched and moved beyond the search engine and into content websites, you are reaching users who have not only searched for your product or service, but are now researching and eager to learn more about your business, and therefore are further along in the process of making a purchasing decision.

While the users you reach with your Chitika | SBM ads perhaps have an equal, or stronger, interest in your product or service these users are also actively engaging in (reading, researching) the content on a content website, so make sure your ad text stands out. For more tips on how to improve your ad text to perform best in a content network check out the Chitika Guide To Writing Effective Ads.

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When do my ads start accruing costs?

Your ads will not start running in the Chitika network until you activate your account. To activate your account, click here and submit your billing information. Your ads will start running almost immediately.

Want more info? Chitika Advertiser | Pricing & Billing Guide.

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What are my payment options?

Chitika's ad program currently only accepts post-payment by credit card.

Chitika accepts: Visa, MasterCard, American Express

The credit card information you submit in order to activate your account will be charged for accrued campaign activity. You will be charged incrementally, based on your assessed account credit limit. You will receive an email notification each time Chitika processed a credit card payment to fund your account.

If you are not receiving email notifications for your Chitika payment transactions, click here to notify the Chitika Advertiser Support team.

Want more info? Chitika Advertiser | Pricing & Billing Guide

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What do if I login and see an Alert! message regarding a payments issue with my account?

• Quick tip: Please resubmit your credit card information into the 'Billing Preferences' section of your account interface.

Chitika uses a highly secure third party credit card processing company to protect our advertisers' payment and billing information, as well as to prevent fraudulent use of our advertising service, and to ensure all transactions are processed efficiently. In the case that our third party processing system detects a potential issue with your account's security, or in the case that Chitika is unable to process a payment to your credit card, Chitika will pause all of your ads, and your account will revert to being 'inactive'.

This is for your protection, as well as Chitika’s, and you can re-activate your account by simply resubmitting your valid credit card information into the ‘Billing Preferences’ section of your account interface. Click here to activate your account.

• If you continue to experience difficulty activating your account, click here to contact Chitika's Advertiser Support team.
  

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How can I view my Chitika advertising payments and account history?

You can view all charges processed through your Chitika account in your 'Billing Summary', found in your Chitika account interface. 

All payments are recorded and transactions are processed in USD currency.

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How often will Chitika charge my credit card for accrued campaign activity?

Once you activate your Chitika Advertiser Account your campaigns will start running in the Chitika Network almost immediately. 

You are charged a one-time $5.00 USD activation fee; you can view this transaction in your Chitika account ‘Billing Summary’ and in your credit card invoice, listed on the date you activated your Chitika account. (i.e.; if you activate your account on May 15, the $5.00 activation fee will be listed under a May 15 transaction date)

• Your billing cycle is determined by your account’s credit limit, assessed by Chitika, and your credit limit will refresh, or adjust, each time Chitika successfully processes a payment through the credit card you assigned to your account.

Being that Chitika only charges your credit card when your advertising costs reach your account’s assessed credit limit, charges processed, as well as respective transaction dates, will vary.

However, if your advertising costs are below your account’s assessed credit limit within a 30-day billing period, you will be charged the sum of advertising costs at the end of said 30-day billing period.

NOTE: Credit limits will always be more than or equal to $50.00 USD.

NOTE: Chitika will not charge you before 30 days unless your account accrues more than your account level credit limit.

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How does Chitika assess my account's credit limit?

Basic Credit Limit Escalation Process

New Chitika advertisers are given a max $50.00 USD credit limit. Chitika adjusts said credit limit immediately after the first payment of $50.00 USD is successfully processed through our credit card billing system.

Chitika advertisers who reach a given $50.00 USD credit limit within 30 days are in most cases given an immediate increased credit limit of $100 or more.

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  • Credit Limit Increase #1: Once Chitika has successfully processed a payment of >=$50.00 USD, your limit will increase to $250.00 USD.
  • Credit Limit Increase #2: Once a payment of >= $250.00USD is successfully processed, your limit will increase to $400.00USD.
  • Credit Limit Increase #3: ” ” $600.00 USD.


After the $600.00 milestone Chitika will assess a customized credit limit for your account to best fit your advertising needs and billing preferences.

IMPORTANT: Chitika Advertiser Account-level credit limits and credit limit escalation varies for each advertiser. If you have questions regarding your account’s credit limit, please contact Chitika Advertiser Support by clicking here.

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How do I activate my Chitika Account?

In order for your ads to be approved, and start running in the Chitika Network, you must activate your Chitika Account by entering your billing information into your account's Billing Preferences.

You can set up your Chitika Billing Preferences using the following credit card options:

• MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover Card

To login and activate your account click on the Billing Preferences link below:

• Your Chitika Billing Preferences

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