Chitika: Contextual Advertising Review

A couple of entries ago, I wrote about alternative ads to Google AdSense. And, I’ve been exploring those that were listed (and not listed).

Today, I was looking at Chitika, who bills itself as a “risk free on demand contextual advertising.” I was considering signing up and experimenting with one or two of my blogs, especially after reading Tris Hussey’s recent write-up on Chitika. It all sounds good on paper – er, on screen.

But, when I started some background research, I found that JenSense didn’t seem to think much of Chitika and Tim Yang thought Chitika’s services is not up to par.

With these things in mind, I held off with signing up, especially since the only way I can experiment with this is by removing Google AdSense, as I understand that I can’t run both at the same time. I guess, I want to find more “success stories” before I give it a go. But, we’ll see…

So far, apart from Tris’s blog, I can’t seem to find anywhere else where Chitika is being implemented successfully. But, of course I’m aware that my research isn’t extensive enough.

On the plus side of this programme: They seem to have a good amount of advertiser/merchant pool and they can monetise both the main blog content and the RSS feeds. They also offer payment via cheque or PayPal — and you only have to wait until your account comes up to US$10 to get paid (as opposed to Google’s US$100 minimum). And, they’ve recently introduced eMiniMalls, which looks really cool.

In any case, if there’s anything else I find on this programme, I’ll certainly write about it again. And, if you have your own experiences with Chitika – good or bad – then I’d love to hear about it.