- Chitika
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Chitika, Inc. 
Type Private Industry Internet advertising Founded Shrewsbury, Massachusetts (May, 2003) Headquarters Westborough, Massachusetts, USA Key people Venkat Kolluri, Co-Founder, CEO
Alden DoRosario, Co-Founder, CTOProducts Chitika Premium Website chitika.com Chitika, Inc. (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka) is a search-targeted advertising network and research firm. Based in Westborough, Massachusetts, the company was co-founded in 2003 by Chief Executive Officer Venkat Kolluri and Chief Technology Officer Alden DoRosario, both former Terra Lycos data mining engineers. The name Chitika means "in a snap" in the South Indian language of Telugu.
Chitika offers search-targeted advertising solutions. The ad units can be used on websites alongside with Google AdSense or as an AdSense alternative.
Contents
Partnerships
In 2010 Yahoo! closed their AdSense competitor Yahoo Publisher Network Online (YPNO) and subsequently recommended publishers migrate to Chitika as a replacement.[1]
In 2009 Chitika began a partnership with the b5media Network.[2][3]
Products
Chitika | Premium
Chitika | Premium displays ads to visitors that reach a page directly from a major search engine. They detect the search query used by the visitor and then return ads that best match that search query. Returning well-targeted, highly relevant ads should result in a higher Click-through rate. This is how the ads monetize the "second click".[4]. All Chitika | Premium ads are Pay per click (PPC) and are promoted by Chitika as their best performing ad product for publishers based on effective Cost per impression (eCPM).
Chitika | Premium ad units are 100% compatible with Google AdSense[5]. According to Chitika the Chitika | Premium ad units do not conflict with the Google AdSense terms of use because the ad units are not contextual and the ad units do not look like Google AdSense ads[6].
Chitika Local Ad Exchange
Chitika launched their Local Ad Exchange (LAX) in July, 2010[7] with the intent of bringing together search-targeting and local advertising. LAX offerings include a local interactive map populated with advertisements.
Chitika Mobile
Launched as part of the above-mentioned LAX product, Chitika Mobile is a feature that allows standard Chitika | Premium ads to change dynamically into mobile-designed ads based on a user's user agent.
Awards and recognition
- 2010
- DPAC Award Finalist for Best Mobile Advertising Network Innovation[8]
- 2009
- Red Herring: Top 100 Global 2008 Finalist
- Red Herring: Top 100 Global 2008 Winner
Past award winners include: Google, Yahoo!, Skype, Netscape, Salesforce.com, and YouTube
- 2008
- AlwaysOn: Top 100 fastest-growing companies in the Northeast
- Red Herring: Leading private technology companies in North America
- MITX 2008 Technology Awards: Finalist, Marketing/Customer Relationship Technologies Category[9]
- 2007
Discontinued Products
File:Chitika2003.jpgChitika in 2003RealContent, a matching engine that gathers behavioral information for displaying targeted advertising, was introduced in March, 2004. In August 2004, ContextAnywhere was released, for integration of contextual advertising functionality by desktop application and toolbar developers.
BlogContext, introduced in November, 2004, is a blog offering by which a line of customized HTML code is inserted into blog posts in order to display contextual ads from the company's network.
In June 2005, Chitika's flagship product was launched: Chitika eMiniMalls. These ad units are interactive merchandise kiosks which provide relevant content and comparative shopping information without taking site visitors away from publisher pages. The New York Times reported Internet Banner Ads Look to Get More Interesting (and Thus Less Easy to Ignore), featuring an interview with Chitika CEO, Venkat Kollrui. Web publishers choose from millions of products, offers, promotions and deals, ranging from iPods to baby strollers, from thousands of name-brand merchants and advertisers to be displayed in this ad unit. Adweek writes Product Search Hits Banner Ads. Chitika eMiniMalls became an award finalist of MITX later that year.
In July 2006, the company introduced Multi-Product Units (MPU), which allow publishers to display four products in a single eMiniMall.
In August 2006, ShopLinc was introduced. It is a customizable web portal tool for "expert-guided shopping," by which a portal publisher can provide products, opinions, comments, customizable RSS and reviews of products for site visitors, while earning CPC revenue for displaying Chitika ads.
In September 2006, Chitika added referral links to all Multi-Product Units, making it easier for publishers to earn referral bonuses.
In October 2006, the company launched ShopCloud$, a plug-in for ShopLinc, by which customers searching for products receive an AJAX drop-down menu of results and search assistance, as well as listings, deals, promotions, and offers from brand merchants in a tag cloud format.
ShopCloud launched November 2006 and displayed popular products in an interactive tag cloud format where each product linked to CPC search results featuring deals, promotions and offers from hundreds of name brand merchants.
Owna, a software widget for social networks released February 2007. Owna displays customizable skins around merchandise a publisher wishes to feature, and in turn displays advertising from Chitika's network.
In May 2007, Chitika offered their version of in-text advertising called Chitika | Linx. Chitika | Linx automatically identifies key products/keywords mentioned in the content on a website or blog and hyperlink (double underline) those keywords to interactive paid (CPC-based) product listings featuring best deals, offers and promotions from name brand merchants. When users mouse-over these links, a small bubble-like scroll over is revealed listing offers from merchants.
In June 2007, Chitika launched a new service at www.Shlogging.com. It is a next generation e-commerce portal driven by a community of users to determine the best deals on and off the Internet.
In July 2007, Chitika developed an application for users on Facebook called iBought. This widget gave users the ability to show off products they recently purchased and gave them access to thousands of product deals.
In February 2008, Chitika released Related Product Unit (RPU), a PPC ad unit designed to work exclusively for blogs and news- or article-based sites. The RPU brings related products right to the user reading a product-oriented story. The RPU quickly became Chitika's highest-earning ad unit to date and publisher favorite because of its easy integration and simple, non-intrusive ad format.
In this same month, Chitika also released a Viral Branding Unit (VBU), which was created to bring the power of video and interactivity to advertisers. This video-based ad unit took online video branding to a new level with interactive features not yet available in any other ad unit on the web. The innovation led to its nomination as an MITX Tech Awards Finalist.
In March 2008, Chitika announced the availability for CPM in addition to CPC Graphic Ad Units. These ads display a relevant and targeted banner/graphic ad on web pages only when it will earn the publisher more revenue than the default CPC ad unit being displayed.
Chitika for Parked Domains was released March 2008. The first domain service to pay users on the first click to the merchant listings. Chitika Domains has a different and refreshing look and feel featuring a variety of products, offers and promotions, as opposed to regular “vanilla” dead-end pages with many boring links.
Controversies
In December 2005, some publishers reported a reduction in revenue after auditing between 25%-90%.[11][12]
In November 2007, Jennifer Slegg, owner of the JenSense Blog, reported a payment mishap.
"When my check arrived at the end of September, my bank would not accept it. Why? Because they had also printed someone else’s check on the back of mine… complete with their name and earning amount (no, I am not going to say whose check I received printed on the back of mine). But whoever did the Chitika checks thought it would be fine to just simply use a pen and cross out the other check printed on the back of my check and then send it off to me. Well, funny, but banks don’t seem to like a second check printed and scratched out on the back of a check I am trying to deposit!"[13]
In June 2008, Chitika allegedly changed its revenue payout suddenly without notifying publishers or responding to their complaints.[14]
In 2010, Chitika created an uproar when without any prior warning, they removed their ads from thousands of websites. The company stated that the sites they had been doing business with were all suddenly placed under "Pending Review" or "Pending Further Review" status. This meant the company would no longer show ads on the sites. As of May 2010, thousands of customers were voicing concerns and many dropped the advertising service altogether. Many angry publishers commented on the issue on Chitika's own website blog.[15]
On March 16, 2011, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") appeared before the United States Senate Commerce Committee and announced its first behavioral advertising case, filed against Chitika for use of a deceptive opt-out mechanism. According to the FTC, Chitika's cookies that opt users out of behavioral tracking were expiring in ten days rather than the stated ten years.[16] A settlement was reached under which Chitika was forbidden from making misleading statements about the extent of data collection about consumers and the extent to which consumers can control the use of their data. Further, the settlement required that Chitika link all its advertising to an effective opt-out mechanism in future. It has been commented that, “[t]his requirement of a hyperlink embedded in online advertisements is a good indicator of the type of Do Not Track mechanism that will be acceptable to the FTC if “Do Not Track” becomes mandatory.”[17] According to a press release by the company, their opt-out cookies have been set to ten years since March of 2010 when the FTC began their investigation.[18] Chitika subsequently claimed to have made only a total of fifty-five cents from the ten day opt-out expiration.[19]
References
- ^ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/31/yahoo-publisher-network-to-be-axed-customers-referred-to-chitika-instead/
- ^ http://www.b5media.com/pressrelease060208.html
- ^ Chitika and b5media Premium ads Partnership
- ^ Video: How Chitika | Premium works
- ^ Chitika | Premium as an AdSense Alternative
- ^ Can I Use Chitika Ads with Google AdSense? - Chitika's Official Support Response
- ^ http://chitika.com/blog/chitika-launches-local-ad-exchange-lax/
- ^ http://www.dm2pro.com/articles/20101129_18/
- ^ The Chitika VBU was selected as a 2008 MITX Tech Awards Finalist.
- ^ Inc.com released their list of the top free services for generating revenue on your website, and chose Chitika | eMiniMalls best for promoting products.
- ^ Chitika Publishers Furious Over Revenue Audit That Has Taken Up To 90% Of Their Revenue
- ^ Chitika cheaters?
- ^ Problems with Chitika’s non-existant support and uncashable check payments
- ^ Chitika Forum Topic: Chitka going down the drain?
- ^ [1]
- ^ http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/03/chitika.shtm
- ^ Dominique R. Shelton and Clinton J. McCord, “How to Respond to Recent Developments in Consumer Information Regulation”, March 23 2011, http://www.wildman.com/bulletin/3232011/.
- ^ http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chitika-ftc-settlement-the-facts-117950664.html
- ^ http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/18/opt-out-cookie-error-earns-chitika-a-whopping-55-cents-and-an-ftc-inquiry/
Categories:- Internet companies of the United States
- Companies based in Massachusetts
- Internet advertising services and affiliate networks
- 2010
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