AdSense and Chitika Combos That Will Skyrocket Your CTR
Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Earn money online
You probably know that one of the best ways to increase AdSense CTR (click through ratio) used to be the trick with pictures.
When AdSense ads were aligned with little photos, CTR and earnings went through the roof.
Google obviously realized this and posted an official correction to its TOS on its AdSense blog.
What you may also know is that Chitika ads include small pictures of the featured products, which make the adverts look very attractive.
I have for some time been exploring various AdSense and Chitika combos to improve my CTR in a way that complies with both AdSense and Chitika TOS.
I have asked AdSense for support every time I tested a new combo and this was their usual answer:
Hi Tomaz,
Thanks for checking in with us. I’ve reviewed your pages and your ad implementation appears to comply with our program policies.
Or
Hi Tomaz,
Thanks for checking in with us about your current AdSense and Chitika ad implementation. I’ve reviewed your site and the ad placement appears to comply with our program policies.
As you may know, AdSense publishers may display ads from other contextual ad networks on the same page as Google ads only if the formatting or color scheme of these ads is sufficiently different from the layout of the Google ads.
In other words, if you choose to place non-Google ads on the same site or page as Google ads, it should always be clear to the user that the ads are served by different advertising networks and that the non-Google ads have no association with Google. If the formats are naturally similar, we’d ask that you use different color schemes for the competing ads.
Of course, we’re constantly investing in our advertising technology, and we believe that Google ads will monetize best for most publishers. Be aware that the addition of third party ads to your site may cause fewer users to click the Google ads on your site and thus your AdSense earnings may decrease.
We’d also recommend that publishers be careful not to place excessive advertising on their sites, as doing so may result in fewer repeat visitors.
Since it is against the TOS to publicly state CTR and as every site and niche is a little different, these are some of the best AdSense and Chitika combos that worked for me. (some pictures have been resized to fit the post area)
But I suggest you do your own testing to find out what works best for you.
1. The Double 2×250 Combo – Parallel
You could stick this ‘double-whammy’ combo right under the title and in your visitor’s face, but I personally don’t do that.
If I use this combo, I put it at the end of the article.
2. The Double 2×250 Combo – Vertical
This AdSense Chitika combo is pushing the limits a little bit, so I don’t use it any more.
It was reviewed and approved by the AdSense team but they may change their mind in the future and I would hate to spend hours checking my Web sites and updating my HTML.
You can also try the reverse combo with Chitika on top and the AdSense unit below. But in my testing, the AdSense CTR was lower.
3. The 486 Chitika and 300×250 AdSense Combo
This one is also slightly risky since the image of the Chitika ad is suspiciously close to the AdSense ad. But then again, the combo was approved by the AdSense support team.
I still use the format, but not very often. You won’t get many clicks on that small Chitika ad, but the AdSense CTR is better than having just a 300×250 ad in the top left corner.
4. The 486 Chitika 160 AdSense Combo
As you know, the ads on the left and right columns don’t get as many clicks as those in the content.
With this combo, the visitor’s eyes are gently steered to the side ads, where they might find something of interest.
This is a very unobtrusive and effective combo.
5. The 300 Chitika 160 AdSense Combo
This is very similar to the above format with an even less obvious attempt to bring the visitor’s attention to the side ads.
You’ll need to do some testing and tweaking before you find the right place to insert the Chitika ad in your HTML code.
As you know, higher AdSense ads are worth more per click, which is why the Chitika ad should be aligned near the top of the 160×600 AdSense ad.
6. The 486 Chitika MPU 486 AdSense Link Unit Combo
This combo gets good CTR for AdSense and can look really nice on your page.
7. The 486 Chitika MPU 180 AdSense Link Unit
This combo is not that effective, but if you put it at the end of your article, you offer the visitor more choices about where they want to go.
I never even tried the reverse combo, having AdSense links on the left and Chitika MPU ads on the right. The pictures might align too nicely with the links and Google might not like it.
But feel free to test the reverse combo and check that the Google AdSense support team and Chitika will allow it.
Final words
Chitika ads work best for product-oriented Web sites and you can specify exactly which product you want in the ad.
Since Amazon.com is also one of the Chitika advertisers, you will be able to select it in your Chitika code if there is a product listed on Amazon..
You will get the best results if the colors of your ads match each other and other colors (links, titles, subtitles) on your page.
Try to think less about the money and more about your visitors.
I personally do not use any combos above the fold that don’t give the visitor the choice of reading the content.
This includes double AdSense blocks, AdSense Chitika combos or double Chitika combos.
It’s very easy to get greedy by constantly tweaking your pages to squeeze every last penny out of them.
Instead, provide visitors with what they are looking for (great content) and then think about how you can get one step closer to financial freedom by intelligently monetizing your content.
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This is a really great post tomaz! Its my first time to be here and i get the feeling i will be coming back more frequently.
Keep it up!
-Kirby
http://kirbitz.blogspot.com
Hey Kirby,
Thanks for stopping by! I checked your blog and you have some cool posts too. Good work.
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I’m very surprised google allowed some of those combo’s, cool though!
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Nice post Tomaz,
In Chitika can I type in Meade telescopes
and then bring up all the ads that have to do with Meade telescopes, or do I have to go one by one
to find the exact models.
Also if you have an article about a product,
but there is no specific Chitika ad for it,
do you leave it out, or do you use another ad
that may not be specific but it is in the same category.
Thanks,
Jeremy
Well, if you review a specific model, then try to find it. If there are no ads, I still create an ad containing the ad model and another more general keyword.
Maybe another advertiser will join Chitika in the future offering that product…
Thanks for the great suggestions and tips here. I will certainly try to use some of these in the near future.
Another great post Tomaz, thanks. I realise it’s an old post but I have some questions (surprise, surprise). If this isn’t the correct place to ask then my apologies.
I’m trying to put together a product site and was going to put a 250×250 adsense top left of my pages and a side by side adsense/chitika 250×250
at the bottom of the page. I’m building offline using arachnophilia (With AJs template). My problem is that when I preview I can see adsense but not how the chitika ad will look.
Is there any way to preview this?
It also states on the chitika website that only US/Canadian search engine traffic will see chitika ads. I’m in the UK but when I visit your vacumn site (Direct, not through a search engine) I can see chitika ads?
Do you use includes for Chitika or do you think it best to place ads on each individual page and focus it to the particular product on that page?
Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post.
John
John,
Here’s how to preview your Chitika ads.
I now use Chitika Premium on my site where I use ads that collapse when there is no search traffic. Some of the ads on my site are still OLD Chitika eMiniMalls which show a default Ipod ad if there is no search traffic.
And yes, I use includes for Chitika now on my newer pages so that I can easily change or remove the ads if needed. (Chitika goes bankrupt
, a better system comes up, …)
Thanks Tomaz – another question … but first thank you for all the time and effort you’ve put in here. I really do appreciate it and reading the comments on this blog, others do as well.
I wonder if I may ask your opinion based on your testing/research? Do you think that 3 250×250 adsense ads on a page is too much?
Why do I ask?
I’ve put the double 2×250 combo parallel on my new site. I’ve used includes and put them in a table to keep them aligned. I also have another 250×250 adsense near the top of the page
I chose the option for chitika ads to collapse if not displaying but I see two issues with that option. Firstly when chitika ads don’t display the page looks unbalanced and secondly I’m missing an opportunity to put a relevant ad in front of my visitors (New site, no visitors yet – but they’ll be here!)
What I had been thinking about doing was ticking the “show different ad” option, put my adsense code on a page of it’s own on my site and entering that as the alternative URL.
I *think* that’ll work OK but is it perhaps overloading the page with ads and is less perhaps the better option.
Cheers, John
John,
In theory, the more adsense blocks you have, the less payment you’ll get on the last blocks. I prefer to link back to my other pages so that people eventually come back to a new page with a block on top again which pays well.
Too many ads can also scare away other webmasters with which you want to exchange links because they know what’s your main motive and they may lose trust with their visitors if they send them to an Adsense trap.