Adsense and Chitika compared

Mark Wallace

You've heard about Chitika but need to get a feel for how it
differs from Adsense and whether it'll be of use to you in
making more money from your site? We attempt to outline the main
differences between these two major affiliate programs.

The Differences

Age of the program: Adsense has been around for a few
years now but Chitika is only a few months old. In fact, despite
all the news and buzz, it's still in beta.

User Base: Having been around for a long time, Adsense
is the grandfather of contextual advertising and has the largest
base of publishers competing for the ads it serves. Chitika has
only a few publishers so far but is likely to grow fast
especially as it has a referral program paying 10% commissions.

Appearance: Adsense ads are primarily text ads that fit
into about 10 standard sizes from 728x90 to 120x600, 468x60 and
others. There are a limited number of image ads created by
advertisers and pre-approved by Google. When an image ad runs it
tends to fill the whole ad block. Chitika ads come in the same
standard sizes but every single ad space is filled with a hybrid
of text and image but, crucially, promoting just one product
from one advertiser. Further, one consistent feature across the
Chitika ads is the interactivity. Each ad has a selection of
tabs which change the content of the ad block when a visitor
hovers over them. The tabs provide information like "Best Deals"
where prices for that product are compared across different
sources, "Reviews", and even a "Search" box that allows your
visitors to search for and get results for similar products
without them having to leave your page.

Terms of Service: Adsense has a fairly restrictive set
of terms that you have to agree to. They've been modified
numerous times and when fine tuned are made more rather than
less restrictive. Among the things publishers are not allowed to
do are to change the Adsense code, specify keywords that ads
should be targeted to, and have more than three blocks of ads on
a page. None of those apply to the Chitika program. There are
other Adsense specific rules that don't apply to Chitika.

Features: Adsense has added several features over the
last 2-3 years. They include channels - a way of identifying
which pages are better earners. It's not perfect and isn't
anywhere near as efficient as a click tracker program but it's
more than what Chitika have; though they are planning a channels
feature soon. Adsense also provides better stats data (and
analysis), AdLinks and other minor improvements. Chitika, on the
other hand, has some interesting features we've never seen in
Adsense. They include targeting a particular product or
advertiser in an ad block so it always shows the same
product/advertiser, rotating keywords per refresh or by the day
of the week, changing the font and colour of the text in the ad
(Adsense offers only colour change, not font and font size),
enabling and disabling contextual serving of ads, enabling and
disabling the search function within ads, and a lot more.

Contextual serving:Adsense serves ads based on the
context of the page. Chitika does the same but has the option of
turning context off. Webmasters can choose to either run it in
contextual mode or specify the keywords/products they want the
ads targeted to. Note: When running Chitika on the same page
as Adsense ads you need to turn the Chitika contextual engine
off to stay within Adsense terms and conditions.

Referral program: Adsense has a new referral program that
pays you $100 if you refer someone who signs up as a publisher
provided that referral earns $100. Chitika pays a flat 10% of
what your referral earns and pays that for a period of twelve
months from the date of signup.

Earnings: Which pays more? It depends. Chitika can pay
very well but it takes a slightly different mindset to what you
may have become accustomed to with Adsense. If you have the
patience to learn about it Chitika could prove very profitable
particularly if you combine it with Adsense. Our sites tells you
how to href="http://www.experienced-people.co.uk/1098-affiliate-programs
/3.htm">run them both safely on the same page without
violating the legal agreements.

This isn't an exhaustive comparison of their very detailed
legal terms of service but we hope we've whetted your appetite
to href="http://www.experienced-people.co.uk/1098-affiliate-programs
/">find out more about Chitika.

About the author:

The author's website presents an extensive review of the href="http://www.experienced-people.co.uk/1098-affiliate-programs
/">Chitika program, and offers revenue enhancing ideas
particularly in relation to using Chitika together with Adsense
and staying href="http://www.experienced-people.co.uk/1098-affiliate-programs
/4.htm">within the legal agreements for both.

About the Author: