I’ve been really happy with my earnings through the new Chitika eMiniMall system, thrilled that it was even exceeding my Google AdSense revenue, but now that it’s time to get paid out, I’m suddenly notified that the projected payment was “audited” and that a whopping 39% of my commission was invalidated as being fraudulent. What the heck? How could I have that high a fraud level??
There’s actually quite a buzz in the online world about this “audit” from the Chitika folk prior to their November payments, actually, so you’re definitely not alone.
The numbers are so high, however, that it’s extraordinarily odd. With some of my colleagues, it’s really hard to imagine that they have even a single fraudulent click, let alone 30-50% being classified as fraudulent by the Chitika folk.
I dug around a bit to see if I could ascertain what algorithms they use to determine whether something is fraudulent or not, and found this interesting passage in their terms of service:
“Chitika shall not be liable for any payment based on (a) any fraudulent impressions generated by any person, bot, automated program or similar device or for fraudulent clicks similarly generated on any Paid Listing, as reasonably determined by Chitika and or its Partners; (b) Paid Listings delivered to end users whose browsers have JavaScript disabled; (c) Paid Listings benefiting charitable organizations and other placeholder or transparent Paid Listings that Chitika may deliver in the event that a Site is improperly configured to comply with Chitika technical requirements; (d) Chitika or its Partner advertisements for its own products and/or services; or (e) impressions co-mingled with a significant number of fraudulent impressions or fraudulent clicks described in (a) above, or as a result of other breach of this Agreement by Client for any applicable pay period.”
Interesting, but here’s an even more interesting snippet (with my highlights):
“Chitika reserves the right to withhold payment of any Revenue Share Payment in the event of any breach of this Agreement by Client, pending Chitika’s reasonable investigation of any of the foregoing or any breach of this Agreement by Client, or in the event that an advertiser whose Paid Listing are displayed on the Site defaults on payment for such Paid Listing to Chitika.”
I have also heard through the grapevine that Chitika automatically rejects any clicks from Asian countries as part of its sweeping anti-fraud strategy, so if you did happen to attract a large audience from, say, Japan, that could be a big problem.
The other issue is “impressions co-mingled with a significant number of fraudulent impressions or fraudulent clicks”. Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t that suggest that if their fraud algorithm detects fraudulent clicks for whatever reason that all clicks during that period of time are discounted, even legitimate traffic?
In any case, what baffles me is why Chitika doesn’t just filter its traffic numbers on the daily reports against the “typical” fraud numbers so that if the average Chitika fraud rate was, say, 25%, then they should just automatically subtract 25% from the numbers they display. Then if you had a typical fraud rate, you’d have accurate numbers, and if you had less than the typical fraud rate (one pal of mine tells me he was penalized only 13%) you’d have an end-of-month increase, which would be darn nice.
Anyway, perhaps someone from Chitika can pop on here and give us a bit more of a definitive answer on how they calculate fraud rates? We’ll hope for the best.
Hope this helps you understand what’s going on with your Chitika account.
Chitika is good i know but for asian countries i think not good..And chitika limited to usa and canada thats bad….For low traffic its not good..so adsense is best no one take place of adsense.
you people are absolutely right about the fact …….Cheat”ika…….they paid me three times in a row…….but when my earnings crossed 100$ a month they banned my account and for the same traffic i am being paid by adsense …….what the hell is wrong with this company…..i think here auditing is SLOW POSION gIVEN TO THE victim Atthe end of the month……..again Don’t them
Thanks for the information. I don’t think PPC is a good business model either. Probably affiliate program is better.
I am waiting the end of February to see my Audited Revenue. I hope they cut about 15%, so that will be good.
Hi Dave! After quitting Adsense cos’ they pay checks and thats not good for an international student blogging in US 🙁 I resorted to Chitika and from day 1 I see good earnings but after reading all these audit stuff, I am disappointed. They are going to clip my earnings too 🙁 Too bad, they have to audit on a daily basis rather than showing nice figures and clipping all at once – I term it slow death.. I prefer the quickest form rather 🙁
Thanks for clearing things btb!!
Hey Dave,
I’m sorry your readers are having problems with Chitika. In general, I think PPC is a poor business model because it is highly vulnerable to click fraud. However, some people have made a lot of money from it because there are advertisers who either don’t care about click fraud or who are getting better ROI than they get at traditional media. WRT the issue of clicks coming from Asian countries, geotargeting is not reliable, so any claims that clicks are somehow filtered should be taken with suspicion. Unfortunately, publishers have no rights in this area, as the engines and/or networks aren’t contractually obligated to compensate them for clicks.
Granted, I am biased against PPC and have been for many years. If your readers continue to have problems, I’d suggest they switch to one of the companies that offers fixed fee advertising.
DataFeedFile.com has a Chitika alternative…
I found this site because I was kind of po when I received a rejected email from Chitika… so I went searching for alternatives.
Chitika turned me down due to not enough traffic on my blog. Fortunately I found a similar service based on a much more fair and open market. DataFeedFile.com is a similar service with much more options and banner sizes to choose from.
What I like about DataFeedFile.com is they allow you to choose what merchant to display products for. DataFeedFile.com seems to be a colaboration of hundreds of merchants from the affiliate industry. Check them out yourself, http://www.DataFeedFile.com.
Zach Zach
I’m another victim of the fraudulent PPC program Chitika. They withheld 90% of my payment through their audit, and then they did not even pay the remaining 10% amount, telling that all are fraudulent clicks.
Chitika sucks! I would NOT recommend it. Chitika is “Cheat”ika.
Sorry you’re having a hard time with them. Without having details of the exact situation, it’s hard for me to have any useful input, but i will say that if there is fraud on your advertisements, you might well not be aware.
For example, a competitor could theoretically click like mad on your ads for a few weeks, then Chitika could mask out the multiple clicks from a single IP address and reduce your revenue rather dramatically without you ever having a clue what’s going on.
So from their perspective, it’s pointless for you to guarantee that 100% of your clicks are legit because you really don’t know who is going to your site and whether the one “hit” in your log file from someone in southern China results in 300 click-thru’s to Chitika’s system. See what I mean?
Fraud is one of the greatest problems with online advertising today and everyone is wrestling with it, from the big guys (Google, Amazon) down to the little fish like Chitika.
Chitika is a FRAUD, I am a victim of them , First they deducted 57% of my earnings in Audit and next month I received a mail that my traffic is Fradulent however I am being paid by Adsense for the same traffic, This is really ridiculous, My traffic is 100% legit and I had offered them to have my server logs and prove my site clicks as FRAUD,Moreover I had referred 14 publishers to them, If they really have a legit reason to boot me out why are they not responding to my questions, the help ticket is wiating for a answer since last 8 days??? I am a international publisher, and I am unable to take legal action against them. I pray GOD Chitika pay for their actions.
Chitika has responded to queries about their audit system with a long, albeit somewhat guarded Q&A on their own site. Please pop over to
http://chitika.com/blog/?p=30
to read their response.
Here’s the most relevant Q&A there, however:
Q: Why did I see a significant difference in the number of clicks after audits?
The daily reports only summarize the data from the raw click logs. On a monthly basis we run our audited process to remove and discount potentially fradulent clicks (i.e., clicks generated by bots, automated scripts etc) and clicks from countries currently not supported. For example, currently we do not have offers and promotions from merchants who are willing to accept and pay for clicks from regions other than US, Canada, Australia and Western Europe. In turn we don’t get paid for clicks from Asia and other regions as well.
I think Dave hit the nail on the head in that last point, which is: why doesn’t Chitika just adjust your “revenue” at the time that the “unaudited reports” are generated? It could be more accurate than just subtracting 25% from your expected revenue; Chitika could just subtract out the clicks that they know are going to be disqualified later (clicks from Asia, or clicks from duplicate IP addresses).