Archive for the ‘Inside Chitika’ Category
Posted by Daniel Ruby On Apr 1
Today is a big day for the Chitika family: we’re making a huge change to our branding by completely changing the name of our company. No longer will we have awkward conversations with potential partners like “I really like what Chittyville does,” or “hey, could I buy a banana from you guys?”
“Everyone thinks our name has something to do with bananas,” says our co-founder and CEO Venkat Kolluri. “Well, it doesn’t. The word ‘Chitika’ means ‘in a snap’ in Telugu.”
In order to ease the confusion, from now on Chitika will be known as ‘Aritipandu’, another Telugu word, but one that should create less confusion over our brand.
“Now, people won’t be confused over whether or not we sell bananas,” says Kolluri. “Aritipandu pretty much says it all.”
For those of you who don’t speak Telugu, ‘Aritipandu’ translates to banana. Given how successful our Banana Party was at AdTech Chicago in 2007, we feel we’re on to something here.
Posted by Daniel Ruby On Dec 1
Big news from the awards front, our recently-launched Chitika Mobile Ads are one of three finalists to win the annual DPAC award for Best Mobile Advertising Network Innovation. The winner will be announced on Deceber 9th at the DPAC Awards ceremony in New York. Fingers crossed!
We’d like to thank the Academy… and all of the hard-working engineers who spent weeks locked in the server room with only a bowl of runny gruel every afternoon until they completed the first mobile ad that worked perfectly on non-mobile sites.
Find out more about the Mobile Ad Unit at chitika.com/mobile, and if you’re into digital advertising drama, pick up a ticket and head to the DPAC Awards on December 9th in New York.
Posted by Daniel Ruby On Nov 12
Recently, our corporate recruiter Margaret Hartwig was featured in a Mashable story about recruiting for startups. Since we’re hiring, I thought it might be a good idea to run through a few things that we – like other creative, flexible tech firms – tend to look for in a candidate.
Willingness to fail. If you’re not willing to fail, you’ll never take risks, and without risk there is no home-run reward (see the stock market for examples). We look for people who are confident enough in themselves to do something borderline crazy, because they think in their heart that it’ll work.
Willingness to succeed. Goes hand-in-hand with willingness to fail, but if you want to work for fast-moving tech firms, you’ve got to be ready to succeed and deal with the pressures that come with it. Success breeds expectation; if you hit a home run, you’d better be ready to hit another one… and another one… and so on. Slow and steady does not win the race in this industry; fast and furious does.
Fight for your ideas. Fight hard. If your idea is awesome, prove it; and if your boss pushes back, be ready with data showing just how much merit your plan really has. At some point, someone didn’t invent the light bulb because their boss told them it was a stupid idea. They missed out on success, wealth, and notoriety. We don’t need that person; we need the person who told their boss exactly why it was a GREAT idea, and went on and did it.
Fit into the culture. Companies like Chitika are not IBM or Dell; there’s a core of intelligent, creative people who love the job and work together like a family (a family that innovates in a snap of the fingers). There’s no dark, solitary back room for you to plug into and work away quietly if you don’t get along; you’re part of the family, or you’re part of another company.
These guidelines should apply to any creative tech startup, not just Chitika. If you’re in the greater Boston area and think these describe you, check out our current openings, and contact our recruiting department to schedule an interview.
Posted by Karla On May 11
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.
Posted by Daniel Ruby On May 6
Introducing the UI Optimizer – the power of Chitika’s research increasing your site’s revenue! 
For the past month, we at Chitika have been experimenting with a UI optimizer for some of our highest-performing sites, and our beta partner sites have seen as much as a 30% lift in their clickthrough rate. Now, we’re excited to announce our entire network is getting the opportunity to see our research at work, making your site’s ad performance jump from a Porsche to a Lamborghini!
The UI optimizer works by testing a large number of ad designs in the same spot on your page. For example, we may have fifteen ad styles designed for a single 300 x 250 spot. With our optimizer, we’ll test all fifteen styles over a period of time – that way we’ve got numbers to show you which look-and-feel variant works the best for your traffic. Once the testing period ends, you’ll see the highest-performing design in that spot, and it’ll bring its specially-targeted clickthrough rate with it!
Now, the 30% increase in CTR is the best result so far and your mileage may vary, but we are 100% confident that you’ll love the results of working with Chitika’s UI optimizer. By the end, you’ll know absolutely that the ad units on your site are the very best, most effective, and most appealing units for your users. Your users will be happy, you’ll be happy, and your wallet will be very happy.
Optimizing today will help you see the clicks and money roll in tomorrow!
Posted by Karla On Apr 13
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 =)
Posted by Daniel Ruby On Apr 2
We at Chitika are honored that Yahoo! recommended YPNO publishers run our ads after their service ends next month. Please join us in welcoming the new publishers from Yahoo! Publisher Network Online!
Read the full story at Tech Crunch »
Posted by Dave On Mar 15
The Chitika Team is excited to be working with Squidoo because they are a model publisher for our network.
Chitika has always been a publisher centric advertising network, working with publishers to maximize advertising revenue and giving them choices about how to do that.
We understand that all publishers have an inner dialogue about how to maximize revenue and grow the business, but also create the greatest user experience possible. Often times strategies to maximize revenue are perceived to be the worse options for ensuring high user experience. Take for example putting up another ad unit. More ads means a worse user experience, right? Well hold on.
Squidoo is uber concerned with visitor experience. So adding a Chitika | Select ad to their page would seem to go against their philosophy of creating the highest quality user experience. Turns out that wasn’t the case. Here’s why:
- Chitika and Squidoo worked together to customize the look and feel of Chitika’s ads to perfectly integrate with Squidoo’s themes. We worked on a custom title and colors that fit both Squidoo’s metrics of quality but also ensuring performance and revenue.
- Chitika’s targeting technology can decide when to show an ad or when to disappear. Yup that’s right, we don’t show ads all the time risking your visitors experience. We think smart impressions is more revenue and user experience. Based upon a number of metrics our ads show selectively and that helps protect Squidoo’s most loyal visitors by insuring that we won’t show them ads.
The end result is that Squidoo is enjoying additional revenue while protecting their impressive brand and high user experience. How could Chitika help your site increase revenue and user experience?
Posted by Terri Swallow On Jan 26
Hey y’all it’s Terri from Chitika and I was fortunate enough to go attend WordCamp Boston 2010 this past weekend and I have some great tips to share with you.
First off – WordCamp was awesome. If any of you are WordPress publishers, thinking about doing more with WordPress or even just a web publisher you ought to attend the next one close to you! You can find out more about the WordCamp events at central.wordcamp.org. If you missed WordCamp Boston all the sessions will be on SlideShare and SpeakerRate soon, and do make sure to watch the Ignite videos.
Here are the top five tips I gathered at WordCamp that I thought would be great to share with you Chitika Publishers (and blog readers)
54 Online Publishing Tips
- Post Often and Consistently
If you have a free week don’t post 10 articles or blogs during that week if you typically post only twice a week. Pick a schedule and stick to it to create a habit. If you have time to write more – write something relevant to your website that might not be time sensitive and schedule it to post in the future or save it as a completed draft to post when you are to busy to write for your schedule.
- Check your Spelling & Grammar
Most of us are not English teachers – but make your 6th grade English teacher proud by proofreading. I will usually construct a post and run it through the Word or Open Office grammar and spell check then I’ll read it aloud to make sure it makes as much sense aloud as it does on screen. If you struggle with things like word choice and grammar you should definitely read the Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White. There’s a free online version but I highly recommend a copy for your desk to read through at least once – pick one up on Amazon!
- Vary Your Posts & Style
Don’t just post text time after time – your regular readers and RSS subscribers would usually love to see different styles of posts. Video posts, audio posts, lists, stories, interviews and add some stock photos to some of your posts too! Your content feels even more fresh when you jazz it up (on top of posting regularly, see also #1).
- Full Disclosure is Optional but Recommended
If you are posting reviews for products or services that you may receive affiliate payments from or referral revenue it’s polite to add some text to the page disclosing this information. It’s optional but make sure to check with your legal department or regional government about what kind of disclosure laws are in place to protect bloggers and their readers. For US Publishers: How do bloggers follow the Endorsement Guides?
Want more tips? Post a comment and we’ll make sure to address some more web publishing tips in the future!
Posted by Karla On Dec 24
We will also be away enjoying the holidays, and will return on Monday, December 28th to reply to your support questions.
