Chitika Vs AdSense

Bloggers and webmasters alike love to monetize their sites to help see a return for their efforts - this is something I feel no shame in admitting. Chitika eMiniMalls has long been a favourite among the community for offering higher payouts than Adsense but the question I ask is, is Chitika right for your site?

What is Chitika?

They're a company who offer contextual, product oriented advertising for your site. The most common format is their eMiniMall (you can see a live example at the bottom of this page at the time of writing). They're common/popular because legend had it that they performed better than Google Adsense.

Chitika vs. Adsense - the performance comparison

I'm in a good position to compare the two options because I've had them both running in the same spot for a couple of months now and their performance translates (in the same time slot of 11 days) to be:

Google 8,016 impressions and 9 clicks, giving it a CTR of 0.11% (I can't discuss revenue for fear of breaching the Terms and Conditions)

Chitika eMiniMalls Somehow managed 9,846 impressions (1,800 more than Adsense) and yielded only 4 clicks which translates to a CTR of 0.04%

Some simple maths shows Adsense wins Adsense had 2,000 fewer impressions than Chitika, managed 5 more clicks and generated 3.5 times more revenue.

How to make Chitika work for you The important thing to remember with these figures is that the ad unit is in a poor position (albeit equally poor to the Adsense unit that outperformed it) and to really get good results you need to use a more obvious/invasive placement.

Conclusion In this instance, Adsense outperformed Chitika by a country mile and the latter network is unlikely to remain on the site for much longer. I value page space more than I do $0.06 per click.