The 3 Commandments of Website Advertising

May 29th, 2009

19 comments

Posted in: Chitika | Premium, Front Page News, Optimizing, PPC Ad Units, Publisher Tools

Rule 1 - Only show ads WHEN the user really wants it

Or: Thou shalt never annoy thy visitors

As you know, the Chitika | Premium units only show up when Chitika is sure about user intent (because we know what search term the user used to find you). For all of your regular users who are simply browsing your site, the intent is much lower. In these cases, the Chitika ad does not show, and you are not blasting another ad into their face. Due to this, you are not annoying your users with yet another ad unit.

Rule 2 - Tell your user WHY they’re seeing this ad

Or: Thou shalt respect thy visitors’ experience

As you can see from the example below, the user keywords are highlighted in gold yellow. This is to explain to the user that the ad is about what he is looking for (Psychobabble Joe says: Since the age of 2, the human brain has been taught to pay attention to that specific color of yellow). When you respect your visitors’ feelings and intent like that, they are more likely to look at the ad and read its contents (and, of course, click on it).

Rule 3 - Only show users WHAT they want to see

Or: Thou shalt give thy visitors what they want — in a way they want it

Chitika | Premium ad units have been designed to be hyper targeted, as the ads are almost always completely targeted to the exact keyword the user typed in the search engine. And in the new Mega Unit, ads flow naturally from top to bottom, rather than left to right. “Why is that,” you ask? Its because for the last 10 years, the Internet has worked very hard to train people to read its pages from top to bottom, not left to right. With the Mega-Unit, people’s tendency to read in that fashion helps your second and third ads get almost as much attention as the first.

Put all these three reasons together and you as a publisher/website owner will get from your visitors what you really want — i.e. clicks. More clicks equal more revenue and everybody is happy. By giving your visitors what they want in an ad unit, they’ll give you what you want in return! Isn’t sharing nice?

You can get the code for the mega unit here or signup if you are not already a Chitika publisher.

19 Responses to “ The 3 Commandments of Website Advertising ”

1. 
   Blogger Says:
   May 29th, 2009 at 8:47 pm

   Some points Chitika could consider for future

   * Why not show ads to UK search users because its a huge English-speaking consumer market. Surely Chitika can attract UK advertisers and the relevant ads will then be targetted to the UK search visitors. I know Chitika does not yet have an inventory of UK advertisers as it currently caters to only US and Canada, but something that it should seriously consider.

   Having said that, I have installed Adsense as an alternate.

   * Why not have more frequent report updates, something similar to adsense? Its really frustratating having to get updates every 24 hours.

   * Why is the related products unit no longer available, or is that, like quite a few other features, only abailable to premium publsihers?

2. 
   Liz Says:
   May 30th, 2009 at 12:28 pm

   I have to disagree with Blogger about frequent updates. I like only being able to check Chitika stats once a day, because it keeps me from compulsively updating all day long, and fretting over whether they are “stuck” or not. Do you really need to know your numbers more often than once a day?

   If google went to a similar system it would eliminate some of the anxiety publishers have. Sometimes Google goes for hours without updating stats and people start freaking out because there is no increase in numbers. It usually evens out by the end of the day.

3. 
   Zemalf Says:
   May 31st, 2009 at 6:49 am

   These 3 rules enforce “reader is king” approach of blogging, which is always the right way to go.

   On a side note, I agree with Liz on the frequent statistics. There’s a whole lot of better ways to spend time than checking statistics more than once a day (even that once a day could be considered too often). Statistics are very important analysis tool but don’t fall into obsession and become Stats-a-holic.

4. 
   Brad Says:
   June 1st, 2009 at 11:27 am

   Great article! Makes me wish my site could fit it in! Will find a way! ;)

5. 
   Chris Says:
   June 4th, 2009 at 10:22 pm

   Very good post Dan.

   I’ve been noticing over the past month that CPC’s have been increasing as well. I can only assume that means good things for Chitika, in regards to growing business. Although my experience is in a niche being devastated by the economy, it looks like more advertising dollars are being directed to the type of search traffic you describe in this post.

   Looking forward to growing with Chitika and rolling out onto more of my websites.

6. 
   druby Says:
   June 5th, 2009 at 9:45 am

   Hey all, thanks for the feedback!

   @blogger - The related products unit was discontinued when we changed our focus from shopping to Chitika | Premium - a great number of our advertisers changed, so the RPU-style unit didn’t really work for our expanded advertiser pool. FWIW, the Mega Unit is showing results similar to what the RPU had back in the day.

   As for UK traffic, we do show ads sometimes to it - it’s a big focus for us currently, and we’re working on improving/increasing the UK-focused ads.

   @Zemalf - Absolutely, we’re basically spelling out a few examples of “reader is king”, with reasons why you can still monetize effectively w/o annoying your kings.

   @Brad - Get in touch with us through the contact box at the lower-right corner of all our pages (Drop a Note, etc. etc.); we’ve got an entire division dedicated to helping publishers place ads in effective, less-than-obtrusive locations.

   @Chris - Thanks much! Our CTO, Alden DoRosario, did much of the work on this post - it was a collaborative effort :) Ad dollars, IMO, are being directed to the most targeted and instant-gratification locations possible in the current economy. Read a report yesterday where newspaper advertising has dropped some 30% in the first quarter 2009 whereas we’re seeing pretty steady growth. It’s all about minimizing ad overflow - Chitika does that, IMO, better than anyone else.

7. 
   Nick Thacker Says:
   June 7th, 2009 at 11:20 am

   Hey there!

   I’m brand new to Chitika, but it seems pretty straightforward and simple to set up (which is GOOD!), and it looks like these “commandments” will help focus more targeted, relevant ads to my site!

   Thanks, and keep up the great work!

   –NIck

8. 
   Josh Tam Says:
   June 9th, 2009 at 1:29 am

   Pretty good tips. You know, other PPC companies do not post tips such as these. I agree with Liz that it is better to have daily updates because almost real-time updates like Google Adsense’s can become addicting and can “kill” our lives in some cases.

9. 
   Mang Jaya Says:
   June 9th, 2009 at 3:19 pm

   I Agree with liz, realtime statistic make me like “statistic viewer machine”.

10. 
    chabi Says:
    June 11th, 2009 at 3:40 am

    Yup..” I agree with you…especially point #3…

11. 
    50,000 Publishers! - The Chitika Blog Archive Says:
    June 11th, 2009 at 10:43 am

    [...] Last but not the least, the HUGE new focus on “Respect the User“. The Chitika ads show up only when the user really really wants them (See our 3 Commandments) [...]

12. 
    50,000 Publishers! | DoctoRevenue Says:
    June 11th, 2009 at 4:05 pm

    [...] Last but not the least, the HUGE new focus on “Respect the User“. The Chitika ads show up only when the user really really wants them (See our 3 Commandments) [...]

13. 
    munigela raju Says:
    July 10th, 2009 at 9:45 am

    pls in my url ads not displaying pls send reply

14. 
    Ryan Travis Says:
    July 10th, 2009 at 9:49 am

    @munigela - I see ads displaying on your URL.

    If you are having issues, please submit a ticket to our customer service department:
    https://chitika.com/support/index.php?_m=tickets&_a=submit

15. 
    mr. white Says:
    July 16th, 2009 at 8:42 pm

    I think the hardest thing in niche marketing is finding the right formula for keywords and niche videos.

16. 
    Website Advertising Says:
    August 2nd, 2009 at 6:45 pm

    I agree with some points, but not all of them.
    My website has 30% of returning visitors and I assume many of them just bookmarked my website. In this case they coming to my website directly (not via search engines) and Chitika ads are not shown. It would be good idea to let publishers control over shown ads and keywords, not through search engines only.

17. 
    KAMALI Says:
    September 12th, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Seems very good info. Great job !

18. 
    Kaithy Says:
    October 20th, 2009 at 3:12 am

    Really i have never see the Chitika ads but nowadays these are appearing some where. Great idea to promote the Brand…

    keep it up..

19. 
    free website advertising Says:
    October 30th, 2009 at 9:35 am

    I have always wondered about this - thanks for making it clear for me.

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