Chitika have been rolling out their new CPM ads over the last few days. These impression based ads will appear mainly on sites with a lot of traffic from non supported countries (they only serve their own ads to traffic from USA, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, UK).
In a sense these CPM ads are ‘alternative ads’ – so if a reader comes from Japan for instance they see the new CPM ad instead of a default ad or a Public Service Announcement. The theory is that at least you’ll earn something from the ad.
I can understand why Chitika are doing this and why it’d be attractive to many publishers. Most sites get at least some decent traffic from the countries that Chitika (and other ad networks) don’t support and to not monetize it is a pity. However….
What concerns me a little about these ads is that the announcement post says that it’s not just when someone from a non supported country visits your site but rather they say they serve them ‘when it makes sense’ to do so and give this example:
“if you are in Canada, and viewing a page with a Chitika ad on it, we will most likely show you a CPM Graphic banner because we are seeing more revenue from graphic ads for Canadian traffic.”
This is all well and good if you’re just looking at the bottom line (who wouldn’t want the most profitable ad served?) but the banner ads that I’ve seen so far are not what I’d consider to be of a high quality. They’re not relevant to sites (ie they are not contextual) and they look cheap and nasty. I hope that Chitika will work to attract premium brand advertisers – but in the mean time I’m considering opting out of the CPM ads at this point. Steve from UMPCPortal tells me he saw cheesy Ringtone ads on his blog and other bloggers are reporting similar low grade ads.
Opting out of the program (it is set to ‘ON’ by default) means you’re likely to take a hit financially so don’t do it without thinking it through but if you have a site where you don’t want banner ads appearing then you might want to consider this.
The world of paid ads seems to get ever so complicated. I’m trying to decide on what ads I want on my site so that I dont have to change my sites layout anytime soon.
I guess your opting out is wise but I wonder what effect it will have on newer blogs?
Thanks a lot for the information.
@Del Sauzo
I don’t think so. The more ad services = more options for us. And at least that would mean more money for the traffic that we can get for our blogs, regardless of our reader base.
Darren, I’m sure you’ve written a lot about advertising on your blog (and I’ve read a few) but if you were to pick one advertising program based on long term stability (fewer changes to its format and style over time) as well as profitability, what would be your choice?
Hi Darren, would you perhaps have an example of what a CPM ad would look like? I don’t think I see any because I’m in the US.
I took a look at the ads that appeared on my site earlier today. One of them was a cheesy, bright and flashy “You have won! and this is not a joke!” with a windows style button on it.
I may be wrong, but this might insult the intelligence of some of my readers.
@Joe – One of the ads was as described above, and another was for an IQ test. It was of decent quality though, even though it was not in context with my site in anyway.
That’s good news, I will apply it soon!
Know what else is low quality? The incredibly spammy email I received from a Chitika rep today. (At least, I think it was a chitika rep. the links all check out.)
“I am very interested in advertising on your site because of the potential. I only reach out to sites that I know will make a lot of revenue with us…”
“… This works very well for news related sites because if I search for something very specifix, click on your site in the results & visit your site – the ad I will see will be based on what I type in…”
“…this will be your best performing ad outside of your top direct sales :o)…”
etc, etc… all one paragraph.
Good grief. That wouldn’t even inspire confidence if my site actually did have the revenue potential mentioned in the second sentence.
Jill – there is a chance that that was sent by someone promoting their own affiliate program.
Could you email me a copy of the email to darren AT problogger DOT net ?
Thanks for the link Darren.
The strange thing about the ad that appeared on my site was that is was in a supported country. In Germany I usually get 70-80% well targeted ads and reasonable results so obviously this is a ‘when it makes sense’ case as you mentioned in your post. ‘Wen it makes sense’ to me means that the advertiser is prepared to pay over the odds to override my own advertising preferences and I think that’s the big issue here.
I’ve hit this issue many times before. Some ads can bring in good revenue but if they hit user numbers, the long term effect can be very negative!
Credit to Chitika for sending out notifications before this happened but even so, I’ve switched back to google on my front page as a result of this so I wonder how it will affect Chitika in the long term.
Steve.
UMPCPortal.com
Chitika’s CPM ads look *VERY* spammy.. I’ve had them running for a day, and ended up opting out of them. Having a “YOU ARE THE 453453 Visitor, You win a free iPod!” ad, surrounded by a flashy, multicolor background just makes your site looks very bad.
If at least they could offer ad categories, such as tech, entertainment, etc.. this would help filter some of the crap out.
I have made a comment once about why I never used MSN for search, the same answer will pug in here.
I am an American living in France. In the Paris area there are over 100,000 of us. Most of us are senior management, people with enough money.
My computer was bought in the US, OS in US English, Office in US English. In fact all software in US English. Using MSN search with all the possible defaults in US English but MSN defaults to French.
CPM ads would probably not work for me, they would be French ads. Either me landing on a site they would be in French, or me including them on a US English site, they would probably still be in French.
Thanks Darren, I haven’t yet looked into that company. However, I don’t like the idea of “win an iPod – blinkers”
Currently, I’m using Adsdaq.com via your referral in an earlier post dealing with CPM. The backup ads are split three ways between CJ.com, Amazon Aff. and Adsense. I’m really trying to look into more CPM programs for my 1 week old blog.
Anyways thanks again for writing such a helpful blog.
The CPM Filler Ads seem to be interesting and innovative and should be marketed to a wider consumer base through a PR tool called my prgenie at http://www.myprgenie.com/business/
Chitika does look a bit spammy. But it’s always good for bloggers to have multiple options and ways to monetize their blogs.
Hello everybody –
We have seen that there are a LOT of times and situations where a publisher’s ads simply will not get clicked on. In these situations, it makes the most sense to show graphic ads in order to bring in the most revenue possible.
Right now we have rolled out graphic ads to countries where our publishers are currently NOT making revenue. We have done this because we want to ensure that when we fully launch this in the US (and other revenue-generating countries), that we are bringing in the highest-quality ads that are paying the highest rates.
Our only goal here is to make our publishers the maximum amount of revenue possible. As we move forward, we are fully-focuesed on working out the kinks (and filtering out all of the low-quality, “spammy” ads) in order for this program to be a major success and at the end of the day, our publishers will be receiving bigger checks because of this.
That is good news, since we bloggers at the “Unsupported countries” will at least have some options to work with.
On the forums and blogs I have run I always prefer to have more control over the ads that show on my sites. I hate having to wonder what quality ad will or will not show up. You run the risk of turning off way to many people taking a chance like this in my opinion. We are in the business of attracting viewers, not driving them away….
—
Political Disgust
I do agree that Chitika’s emails come off as very spammy. Although, they do seem to be getting better on other things, this is something that has to change.
I think this is a great idea for Chitika, I understand the concerns about ads that aren’t relevant, but for a lot of people this is going to help their bottom line a lot.
I have already opted out of these CPM ads but I do think that Chitika will get better ads into the system, remember that this is brand new and I’m sure they are working on improving it.
Hi Darren and others using Chitika from unsupported countries. I’m (or used to) using Chitika from one of the unsupported countries. My post here is not particularly about CPM ads but eMiniMall. I’ve already posted this on Chitika blog with no response.
The thing is, when I used eMiniMall on my site, I got iPod-only ads which is understandable since I was supposedly viewing ads from unsupported country.
But I have since seen a few websites with fully-functional and targeted eMiniMall. Since I’m still viewing from the same unsupported country, what does this mean?
My own conclusion is Chitika is not supporting PUBLISHERS from unsupported countries, not VIEWERS.
Am I wrong in this? I have since stopped using eMiniMall and it’s such a shame because I liked it.
I hope someone will tell me I’ve made the wrong conclusion or my logic is not working. I’d like to resume using eMiniMall or maybe look for other options.
Chitika really confuses me about how many ad it can provides. So, please anybody tells me how many ad types does it actually has. When i logged in i only see 4 types of ads: Graphic, eMiniMall, Webspace and linx. i don’t see anything else mentions here.
I kinda get it now. Chitka is very good at confusing its user with so many rules and different ad system. Just make everything so complicated for publishers. All publishers just want to focus on their content and web site, which is already time consuming. We do not want get stuck on what ad to use and what not. Having too many options isn’t always a good thing. With adsense, it is much more simplier.