We want to invite you to try out our newest creation: Chitika Maps [Beta] – A full-featured mapping service. While other services are beginning to charge for map usage starting in 2012, our brand new maps are free to use. What’s more – we’ll pay you to use them.
According to Erick Schonfeld’s report on mobile trends, smartphones now host over 78% of all mobile ads in the United States. He references research from InMobi, one of the world’s largest mobile ad networks, which reviewed mobile ad impressions from quarter to quarter of this year. Now well into quarter two, InMobi already has seen an 11% rise in mobile ad impressions on smartphone platforms. They expect that smartphones will serve 90% of mobile ads by the end of quarter four.
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On June 28th, Google launched their new social networking site, Google Plus. The release instantly grabbed the attention of the tech world, and flooded the blogosphere with all sorts of posts, articles, and videos. The common question has been: “Can Google Plus compete with Facebook and Twitter?” The data analytics team here at Chitika decided to conduct a research study looking at an early indication of growth, and searches. We also wanted to how Google Plus would fare amongst the heavy hitters of social networking.
According to Matthew Campbell and Amy Thomson of in Bloomberg.com that the geo-locating Nike and Heineken apps proves that mobile advertising has arrived for real. Due to the recent developments in smart phone technology and the resulting increase in popularity, mobile advertising is the hot new marketing venue. Campbell and Thomson cite Gartner Research, which projects that there will be a total of $3.3 billion spent on mobile ads in 2011. Based on the persistent rise of smart phones and apps, they predict that the total capital in mobile advertising will reach $20.6 billion by 2015. Campbell and Thomson point out that companies are investing heavily in mobile ads, taking advantage geolocation feature on smart phones and tablet computers.
The massive growth of mobile games since 2008 reached an astounding $6 billion last year. Earlier this year, Don Reisinger reported that Juniper Research expects this $6 billion in sales to reach $11 billion by 2015. This assumes that the current rate of growth of mobile games continues and there is little sign that it is flagging. The popularity of mobile gaming has presented marketers with a prime opportunity to advertise. Reisinger expects a 10 fold increase in in-game ad revenue from last year ($87M) to 2015 ($894M).
Local advertising is definitely a sector we are extremely excited to be getting into. We have partnered with some guru’s in the local ad industry, like YellowBook and CityGrid Media. The potential benefits of
Chitika | LAX are going to be plentiful for Chitika publishers as this will bring a great new way to monetize local traffic that was, until now, ignored.
LAX will work in two different ways, there will be a Chitika | LAX for Desktop & Chitika | LAX for Mobile. Your local search traffic on a standard home computer will see an ad featuring a map of local businesses matching what they’re looking (searching) for near them, as well as local listings- it will look something like this:
For your mobile search traffic, LAX is the first solution that will automatically detect the mobile users and adjust their experience accordingly. One touch (touch to call) will allow potential customers to call local advertisers from the mobile ad. This ad will look something like this:
(click to enlarge)
Chitika | LAX will be available soon!!
Click here to learn more about Chitika | LAX
Click here to read our LAX Press Release
GeoDomain Expo is the sharing of information and best practices among the Associated Cities member/operators and is the reason why Associated Cities has become one of the most important coalitions of independent media owners on the Internet.
Vik Chhabra, Director of Business Development at Chitika, was asked to present on the: Developing Any City panel.
Not all cities are created equally. What core strategies can be used to monetize any city’s potential, regardless of size or tourism numbers (or lack thereof).
Vik Chhabra speaking at GeoDomain Expo 2010
Alden DoRosario, Co-Founder & CTO, Chitika spoke on a panel about “What Works for Ad Networks: Technology Challenges” at AppNexus Summit 2010.
Alden was joined on a Technology Panel with others who represent the richness of innovation happening in the ecosystem of technology. Click the video below or click here to watch.
The man behind our newly famous “estimated number of iPads sold” is actually one of the youngest “men” here at the Chitika office; Gui Pinto just celebrated his 20th birthday.
In the picture above, Gui is holding his brand new iPad he received as a gift from Chitika CEO, Venkat Kolluri for putting together the data so quickly.
“I am super thankful and very excited to own my very own iPad. I also can’t wait to get into developing new apps for this thing.”
What is this iPad estimator and how was it born?
Gui Pinto was the recipient of a very early phone call from Chitika’s CTO, Alden DoRosario last Saturday morning in which he told him, “I have an idea…”.
Gui spent the next 12 hours putting together the data & the page featuring real time stats! During the duration of writing this post, there were 768,480 iPads sold, but if you click here now, it will be more than that.
The estimator gives you a breakdown of adoption by hour and by state. How did we do it? You can read more into the technical stuff here.
I know I am looking forward to more of Alden’s ideas =)
I came across an interesting report on TechCrunch today on ad networks with malware-infected advertisements. The report referenced some statistics put out last month by the Avast! anti-virus team, warning people about a new bug making its way through the internet through advertisements.
The study posted the ad networks that spread the malware at the highest rate, and lo and behold, Chitika was nowhere to be seen. The Chitika ad network appears to be safe.
I asked our CTO, Alden DoRosario, about what we can take away from this, and here’s what he said:
“The Chitika text ad units are currently one of the safest forms of ad revenue for publishers. The text-based advertisers and the code that runs in each ad unit is written and controlled by Chitika — ensuring that no third-party code runs on your site.
“Historically, ad networks get into trouble when they take un-verified third-party code from advertisers and deploy it on their publishers’ sites. This is very common in ad networks that run graphical ad units which need access to Flash and other scripting technologies.”
So there you have it, Chitika publishers. Straight from the boss’s mouth – the Chitika ad network is one of the safest on the Internet.
Hi, all! I’ve put out a few research studies showing that Bing traffic converts better than Google traffic, and always the response from publishers has been: “Great, now what do I do?” How do you optimize your website to increase your traffic from Bing specifically?
Well, last week I attended SMX West in San Jose, and had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Sasi Parthasarasy, one of the brilliant minds behind Bing, and asked him just that. Let’s see his response:
Thanks Sasi for your candor, and your advice. You heard the man, folks: secure up those sites, and blow readers away with awesome content!
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