This morning, a commentary I wrote for MediaPost’s Online Media Daily was published. The article is called “Don’t Lose Faith in the Click,” and it should make publishers feel better about monetizing their websites despite overall industry drops in clickthrough rate and pay per click.
The Internet has long been the place where advertising models go to die, but one measurable — the click — is still very much alive and kicking. As Mark Twain once said, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” What we’re experiencing now is, rather, an evolution of sorts - online advertising is being pulled further and further away from demographics and readership rates and closer to intent-based targeting.
The MIT Entrepreneurial Forum, one of the more interesting groups of smart people on the East Coast, met Wednesday night to discuss one big question: “Is there still money in the advertising revenue model?” Our own Jeff Sable, VP of Publisher Sales, was invited to sit on the panel, speak, and answer questions. Video was taken. Answers were given. Awesomeness was achieved. Enjoy the video!
For more information on the event, head over to the event page, and make sure to check out the MITEF if you’re anywhere near New England and are interested in entrepreneurship.
“Bing!” That sound is a brand new search engine (sorry, “Decision Engine”) from Microsoft leaping into the fray and making everyone’s life a little more Microsoft-y. Launched in late May, Bing has started taking searches away from reigning powerhouses Google and Yahoo! - and it works great with Chitika | Premium ads.
As much as we love search, and as much as we live by the power of search engines, you didn’t really think we’d be unable to serve ads to Bing traffic, did you? It’s an exciting new tool that Microsoft hopes will revolutionize the way people search on the Internet. We’re all over that.
Plus, when I went to grab this screenshot, they had a picture of Boston (where Chitika lives) as the main image. It was like fate telling us “Yeah, Chitika and Bing work well together.”
So, if your site is getting traffic from Bing, that’s great - your Chitika | Premium ads will continue to show up and be exactly what your site visitors are searching for.
After the release of our new MEGA-Unit: 4x More Clicks/Revenue, thousands of Chitika users got access to a great new revenue increase. This never-before offered size ad unit is ONLY offered by Chitika, and has opened up a new door to revenue solutions for our users. So now if you will, please join me in welcoming the next size ad unit in the MEGA-unit family: the 500×250:
This new ad unit was made for those users who would like to benefit from the untapped revenue of the new MEGA-Unit but their website is limited to a small pixel ad space. Originally the MEGA-unit a: 550×250 was a bit too large for a small number of users. However, we feel it is important to be able to cater to all of our user needs.
We are very interested in how the new MEGA-Unit is working out for you, so please share your experiences by leaving a comment below. And as always, you can request your site needs and new ideas in our forum here.
LOGIN HERE To get your MEGA-Unit size: 550×250 or 500×250
First of all, please allow us to thank all our wonderful publishers. As of 11:23AM EST on June 2nd 2009, Chitika crossed the 50,000 publisher mark. We really appreciate each and every one of you, and thank you for supporting us in our quest to make Internet ads better for everyone - advertisers, publishers, and readers.
Chitika Half Century
On a side note, in the wonderful game of cricket, when a batsman crosses the 50 mark (called “the half century”), the game stops and the batsman raises his bat (sort of like one of our local Red Sox sluggers giving a post-home run curtain call).
Some more cool Chitika stats for data lovers:
Since the launch of Chitika | Premium last May (about 13 months ago), the Chitika network has more than doubled (an almost 170% increase) from around 18,000 pubs to today’s momentous 50,000+
The growth has been 100% organic mostly with word of mouth and referrals. <rant>We are the world’s biggest Internet company that has NOT yet been covered by Techcrunch — even though we power ads for most of the companies that ARE covered by Techcrunch </rant>
A key driver for the growth is that with Chitika Premium, Chitika can run on any type of website (Chitika old-timers will remember a time when Chitika used to be about product-oriented sites only). We are like the AFLAC of online advertising - you add Chitika to supplement your website revenue (sort of like what AFLAC does for insurance)
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)
None of this would have been possible without our wonderful publishers, and that brings us to part 2 of this post: I would absolutely LOVE to hear your feedback on how we can make the service better. We always strive to come up with new and innovative ways to please publishers and readers, but you are the ones who see our ads in action on your site day in and day out. Please use the comments box below — or if you are reading this on chitika.com, the feedback box at the bottom right of the page — and let us know what we can do for you. I’m sure there’s something out there that no advertising network in the world does that you want — and we want to be the network to bring it to you!
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.
Hey everyone - I want to introduce the newest addition to the Chitika | Premium lineup - the 550×250 MEGA-Unit. Across our network right now, the MEGA-Unit’s CTR is 4 times higher than our other Premium units - so you can see why we are excited about it! I want to answer some important questions about it here on the blog:
What is the MEGA-Unit?
It’s our newest Chitika | Premium unit, and it’s really BIG! Take a look:
Why should you use this?
Across the board, our new MEGA-Unit is adding a massive increase in clicks and revenue:
AskDaveTaylor.com increased his Chitika earnings from $85/month to $2000/month by adding the new MEGA-Unit to his site (Dave talks about this in greater detail on his site).
ArticleAlley.com added the new MEGA-Unit and reports that “The result was a massive 721% increase in income - without any noticeable knock on effect to our other income providers.” - Adrian from ArticleAlley.com
Couponmom.com added the MEGA-Unit to just 1 of her pages, and immediately doubled her eCPM and revenue.
How do I get it?
If you have a Chitika account, you can get the unit by clicking here, then choosing the 550×250 “MEGA-Unit” from the drop-down.
If you don’t have a Chitika account, click here to sign up.
Where should I place the MEGA-Unit on my site?
We are seeing it work best placed directly above or below the main content. For example, you can see where ArticleAlley.com put it on this page (scroll to bottom of article).
If you find yourself silently thinking or very loudly shouting the above statement then we’re here to help. The good news is, your ads are probably working perfectly on your site - you just can’t see them; this is actually normal, and I’ll tell you why.
Chitika Premium ads work differently from traditional advertisements on your website. It will not just camp out on your site displaying an ad all the time (which can be annoying to your visitors), because the wise people here at Chitika decided that approach to displaying ads was actually not all that smart. So we decided to do it differently.
The Premium Approach
Premium ads will only appear on your site to a visitor that clicks through to your website from a search engine. Why? Because we believe that targeting their search query and showing an ad related to that will result in a higher CTR and we don’t want you to feel like you are annoying your regular visitors with ads (this is especially important for forum owners).
How to test your ads
It’s very easy to check out how the ad actually displays on your site by adding #chitikatest=keyword to the end of your URL in your browser’s address bar (for example - www.yourdomain.com#chitikatest=doctor)
Hit
Refresh the page by pressing +
You will now see how the Chitika | Premium ad looks on your site for whatever keyword you used in the test (in the example, we used “doctor”).
You won’t see exactly what your visitors will see in the ad unit because for them it’s targeted to their search query, remember? :)
Still have questions? No problem, comment below so I can help.
If, after using the test tool to view the Premium ad on your site, you still cannot see it or are experiencing issues, you can receive assistance from our experts in support. To submit a ticket to support, click here.
Our Chitika | Premium WordPress plugin has made it easy for so many of you to add Chitika | Premium to your blogs, but it is limited in customizations.
Not anymore! As of version 1.3 we’ve made it easy to customize more about the placement appearance of your ads.
You already know you can change the size, colors and placement (above and below) but with just a snippet of code added to your style.css file in your theme you can really make the display your own.
Add Space
Is your ad too close to the post?
Just add the following lines to your style.css file:
.chitika-adspace { margin: 10px 0;}
It will add some visual space, or white space, above and below the ad.
Center your Ad
Don’t like the way your ad looks aligned to the left? Why not center it?
Add this line to your style.css
.chitika-adspace { text-align:center; }
Your Ad Can Fly Right
Do you want your ad to appear to the right of your post?
There’s a couple steps to accomplish this:
First you’ll have to choose your placement to be above or both
Then choose an ad size with a smaller width For this placement style we recommend the 250×250 Square or 180 x 300 ad size
Once you’ve done that, just add the following line to your style.css file:
We also think this option looks cool with a 120 x 600 skyscraper ad (above positioning only) - it’s almost like adding a dedicated sidebar to display ads only to your search traffic!
CSS Classes For You CSS Pros
For those of you who are familiar with style sheets or coding style sheets the plugin now adds the following classes to the divs containing the ads:
chitika-adspace (all ads)
above (above only)
below (below only)
aboveboth (above when both are displayed)
belowboth (below when both are displayed)
Have you done anything like this with your ads?
Tell us about your customizations in the comments below!
Since May 2008, the new Chitika | Premium service has been on a tear — growing 10-20% monthly to now sport the 5th largest pool of search advertising in the world. To accommodate this explosive growth, Chitika is hiring some key positions at our Marlborough, Massachusetts offices and is also opening a new San Francisco sales office. If you know of anyone who might be interested, please do send his/her resume to alden [at] chitika [dot] com or drop me a tweet @adorosario
Here are some of the positions that are open with links to more details. All positions are in-house full-time at our Marlborough, Massachusetts office (except the San Francisco sales position)
Please note: These are all current positions with approved budgets. Hiring for these positions is immediate. To apply, please send your resume to alden [at] chitika [dot] com or drop me a tweet @adorosario
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