Chitika Declares Invalid Clicks Valid

This seems to be the day for press releases. This one will be appearing shortly on the Chitika site.

Chitika Declares Invalid Clicks Valid

Company Discovers Flaw in eMiniMalls Invalid Click Detection Algorithm

Marlborough, MA - April 1, 2006 - Chitika (www.chitika.com), a leading provider of contextual advertising solutions, today announced that it has discovered an important flaw in its algorithm for detecting invalid clicks in its eMiniMalls interactive merchandising service.

“The previous algorithm was all wrong,” says Tita Chae, chief algorithms officer for the company. “Although the mathematics behind it are complex, essentially the invalid click detection algorithm takes the unaudited click data and halves it to produce the true earnings numbers for our valued publishers. What we've discovered, though, is that someone entered the algorithm incorrectly into our computers, flipping the numerator and denominator parts of the equation. So instead of halving the clicks, we should have been doubling them.”

Although Chitika has been criticized in the past of its handling of invalid clicks and changes to its algorithms, Chae doesn't think any of the publishers will complain about this change. “Just to be nice, we're going to make the changes retroactive to November, 2005. We value our publishers and want them to be happy.”

Advertisers have expressed support for these changes as well. “Look, just because people from India and China are clicking the ads doesn't mean I'm not willing to pay for those clicks, even though I don't ship to those countries yet,” says merchant Sole Tshir. “I'm building an international brand, you know, and when we are ready to enter those markets our advertising on Chitika will make it that much easier.”

Payments to publishers are being processed today. Those who've elected to receive payment by PayPal will see the money by tomorrow at the latest. Check payments will take longer to process but should be done by the end of the week.

Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.

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