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.
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!
Some have been asking what Hooty the Search Owl will look like. I mean there will be so many 6′4″ owls at SES New York it’s clearly important that you know which Frisbee loving owl knows the way to a free beer tonight.
Send us a note if you are coming–we are offering all Chitika friends 20% off SES full conf passes, and free exhibit passes.
What’s in store?
Our SES “SearchAppalooza” workshop will feature Chitika’s “Kick-Ass Search App” contest…“Think American Idol for developers, with Yahoo! and Microsoft as the judges.” Read more…
Stop-by our SES booth (#230) and meet “Hooty the Search Owl” –a 6′4″, fluffy owl who loves to play frisbee.
Can’t attend?
You can win cool stuff & watch SearchAppalooza from your couch.
SearchAppalooza Twitter Contest for an Amazon Kindle2!
To enter, click here to post a SearchAppalooza tweet.
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
1. What happened to my traffic from October and November?!? It’s gone!!
The “unaudited” (or ‘raw’) data is cleared from your account every 60-90 days. The reason for clearing your past months of unaudited data is to speed up loading of your current reporting data.
However, your audited stats (which is what payments are based on) will never be cleared from your account. Here’s a great knowledgebase article on how to view your audited data.
To view your “audited” revenue stats in your reports simply click on “Change Report Metrics/Settings” and select “Audited Revenue”:
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2. What happened to Chitika | eMiniMalls?
Chitika | eMiniMalls have been upgraded to Chitika | Premium ads over the past year. With this change we can now cater to ALL types of websites - finance, health, automobile, etc., instead of focusing on websites centered around shopping products & product reviews. Since this upgrade our publisher network has grown from 17,000 to 39,000!
Learn more about Premium and its award-winning innovative technology here.
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3. How come I see “mortgage” ads in my Premium ads? My site isn’t about mortgages!
Premium Ads can only be seen on your page by visitors who enter your site from a search engine, and the ad displayed in this unit will be based on the term they searched for. To preview the ad, we created a Preview Tool that will show you a “test” of how the ad will appear to a search engine visitor reaching your site. The default term for this ‘test’ is “mortgages”.
To use the Preview Tool- Add this text to the end of your URL: #chitikatest=mortgage
Then click ENTER, and Ctrl + R to refresh your page.
You can change the term for this ‘test’; if you change the word “mortgages” to “cars”, you would see an add for cars, etc.
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4. I tried logging into the support section, but it wouldn’t let me!
The log-in for our Customer Support System is different from the account section of chitika.com - this way, non-members can submit questions.
FIRST, click “Submit a Ticket“, to contact support. After you submit your question, you will receive an email with a user name (your email address) and password to log in to the Support section. If not, try checking your spam folder (sometimes the spam monster steals our emails).
We want to encourage anyone who has an issue with their ads or any part of Chitika services to let us know so we can work on fixing it right away. You may have noticed our Feedback tab throughout our website - thank you all for your great feedback!
When its smart to show an ad and when it’s wise NOT to…
The constant question throughout advertising has been and always will be “what type of ad should I show on my website?” As an ad network, we’re sensitive to this question for our users, but also aware of it as we cater to our users. As we took a step back to analyze the situation we realized that in order for our publishers to use their ad spaces to its fullest potential we had to make a fundamental change in the way we display ads in these spaces.
The majority of online ad budgets are wasted on mismatched ads which results in a lower potential of revenue for online publishers. So we decided to change our strategy; from deciding WHICH ad to display, to WHEN to display ads. This paved the way for a new technology you can find in our Chitika | Premium ad units - the industry’s first intelligent collapsing ad units, designed to only show up for targeted website visitors.
We are honored that this technology is why Chitika was selected as a Red Herring 100 Global ‘08 finalist. Venkat Kolluri, Chitika’s CEO, will be presenting at the Red Herring conference in San Diego on January 15th.
Calling All present and future Chitika Publishers in the San Fransisco Area - we want to buy you a drink!
Come have a drink and a chat with Alden DoRosario (CTO) and Vik Chhabra (Publisher Sales Specialist) tonight at the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco. They’re at the end of their wild voyage to the Bay Area, and they’d love to meet up with you to chat about… well anything that’s on your mind!
Happy hour will take place from 6-8pm, and all drinks are on Chitika. Come say hi!
Buena Vista Cafe 2765 Hyde St.
San Francisco, CA (415) 474-5044
Many publishers have expressed frustration with our “audits” process (at the end of the month, we discount the invalid clicks from reports - you can read more about this here.)
Well we have good news - with our new Chitika | Premium ads, audits are pretty much a thing of the past! Chitika | Premium is set up differently than our old eMiniMall/MPU units, and audits on Premium units are usually less than 1% of total earnings.
In most cases, there are zero audits on Chitika | Premium ads - meaning that “what you see is what you get” from your daily reports.
Michael Arrington is a big mouth. So is Aaron Wall. And ShoeMoney. In fact, one of my all-time favorite big mouths is Darren Rowse (someone who I have collaborated/worked with for a long time on my journey here at Chitika). To make it perfectly clear - I’m referring to the term “big mouth” as a web-influencer, and I believe being one is a good thing.
A long time ago, before I worked in the online sphere, I’m pretty sure that I saw the term “big mouth” in a negative light. Like - something you would call someone who really liked to hear the sound of their own voice. That all went right out the window when I entered the internet industry.
Online, having a big mouth means that you have a certain amount of influence over others. It means that you have a lot of people who watch/listen to/read what you have to say. It means that your fans/readers/followers (Twitter anyone?) respect you enough to take action based solely on your opinion. And in this industry, the big mouths are the most respected (and valued) individuals of all.
I can speak to this personally - at Chitika, we’ve seen the impact of big mouths first-hand (what I like to refer to as “The Big Mouth Effect” - trademark pending). Like when Darren Rowse writes about us on ProBlogger, or Aaron Wall does a piece on SEOBook, or Patrick O’Keefe speaks highly of us in his newest ebook.. each one of these holds tremendous value to our company. And I don’t mean just emotional value (although we definitely do love those guys!).. I mean value as in dollars - specific addition to our company’s bottom line. The value of a big mouth is unquantifiable, and it is what every company strives for (online and offline).
This blog post actually spurs from an email that I mistakenly sent to a big mouth, where I referred to him as such, and he (understandably) took offense to this. But I’ll tell you what - not only do I have tremendous respect for him professionally, but I’ve met him and hung out with him before, and he’s just an awesome guy. And the bottom line is - without big mouths like him, it is very likely that our company would not be where it is today.
So - for all you aspiring bloggers and internet rock-stars out there - if someone calls you a big mouth in the future, be proud! You are most certainly on the right track.
-Posted by Ryan Travis, Chitika Director of Client Services
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