Contextual Advertising Battle

With adsense being as profitable as it is for both Google and the publishers who put adsense on their sites, and with Google screwing everyone using adsense, there is huge demand for contextual advertising services.

Over the past few months Chitika has looked like a promising alternative to adsense. At one point I had 3 people in 2 days call me and ask me if I’d seen it and if I had tried it.

I haven’t tried it. I don’t think I’m going to.

There are two reasons for this.

1. Because I don’t like to be the front runner on things. I don’t like to be the one testing out all the latest and greatest. I don’t like to be the one coming up with the latest technology, or the latest exploit for something. I like to wait and watch everyone else spend their time doing crap, and then, once it’s been proven to be effective, I’ll go implement it WAY better than anyone else has done. I don’t want to invent the operating system, I just want to use it more effectively than anyone else has done. I don’t want to invent the light bulb, but after I know it’s effective I’ll build a 10 billion candle power light.

2. Because of the latest garbage chitika is doing with paying their publishers. Jensense reports that chitika is delaying their monthly audits for 15 more days, so they’re not going to pay their advertisers within what their TOS says (net 30). After this happening two times, how can anyone trust chitika?

It looks like chitika is having a harder time than they expected (and than everyone else using them expected) figuring out how this ppc contextual advertising thing works. It kind of goes back to what I said about contextual advertising services needing to go after vertical markets, instead of trying to be everything to everyone. Unless you’re google, (and even if you are google), you’re going to have one heck of a time dealing with click fraud if you are trying to please everyone, and if you’re trying to do a ppc model.