Chitika Ad Network Banks on NOT Showing Ads

Selected as Top 100 Global ‘08 Finalist by Red Herring

Marlborough, MA — January 8th, 2009 — Chitika Inc., a full service online advertising network, today announced that it has been selected as a Red Herring 100 Global ‘08 finalist.  Chitika attributes its success to knowing when, and more importantly–when NOT — to show an ad. It is common knowledge that the majority of online ad budgets are wasted on mismatched ads that do not convert, and only serve to annoy web users.  “Our biggest success comes from this knowledge, and our technology is based on learning when not to show an ad,” says Chitika CEO, Venkat Kolluri.  “Being recognized and selected as one of the Top Tech companies in the world by Red Herring is an honor for us.”

Mr. Kolluri will be presenting at the Red Herring conference in San Diego on January 15th. 

Chitika’s award winning advertising program is based on proprietary patented behavioral ad targeting technology that tracks, tags, and targets users based on online search activity, session analysis, and affinity to specific offers, promotions and adverts. For advertisers and media buyers, Chitika is a proven search engine marketing (SEM) channel for targeting searches conducted by users on the top search engines (similar to Google Adwords). For publishers, Chitika is a very effective monetization service yielding high eCPMs.

This technology is the foundation for Chitika’s newest ad units - Chitika | Premium, the industry’s first intelligent collapsing ad units, designed to only show up for select targeted website visitors.  First released in May 2008, Chitika | Premium has led to massive success for the company including doubling their publisher-base to over 34,000 website owners, and increasing their network-wide eCPM by 300%.  Chitika is now serving over 650 million search-targeted ads per month. This is more search queries than Ask.com, the 5th-largest search engine (according to the August 2008 ComScore report showing Ask.com with 364 Million searches), and puts Chitika firmly on the heels of the third largest search provider, Microsoft. 

Video demo of the Chitika | Premium ad program:
http://tinyurl.com/56dzur

Full list of Red Herring Global ‘08 Finalists:
http://tinyurl.com/82adm9

Red Herring 100 winners and finalists from North America, Europe and Asia of the last three years are eligible for this coveted award. The Red Herring editorial team deploys a detailed process to whittle down a pool of 600 eligible, promising companies to the 200 finalists of this global award. Evaluations are made on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, innovation, management, global strategy, and ecosystem integration. The finalists, elite executives and venture capital leaders will celebrate the Top 100 Privately Held Companies from around the world in San Diego from January 14-16, 2009.

About Chitika

Founded in 2003, Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka), is one of the largest search-targeted advertising networks. The company serves over 2 billion ads per month across more than 34,000 websites. For more information visit: www.chitika.com.

About Red Herring

Red Herring is a global media company which unites the world’s best high technology innovators, venture investors and business decision makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine, an online daily technology news service, technology newsletters and major events for technology leaders around the globe.  Red Herring provides an insider’s access to the global innovation economy, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy. More information about Red Herring is available on the Internet at www.redherring.com.

Contacts:

Ryan Travis of Chitika, Inc., 508-449-3870, ext. 980
ryan@chitika.com

Anam Alpenia of Red Herring, Inc., 650-428-2900
aalpenia@redherring.com

Source: Chitika, Inc.