Chitika vs. Google AdSense

Yesterday, I have received a question from Ahmad, who asked me what do I think is a better online money-maker. Is it Google AdSense or the popular Chitika advertisement network? In this post, I’d try to answer this question and help you all to decide which advertisement network you should use on your sites.

Original message by George is listed below. If you want to get answer to your question, feel free to contact me directly using our contact form.

Hello Bash Bosh,

My name is Ahmad and I’d like you to tell me which advertisement is the best for online advertising. Which one have better CTR, payments… Google AdSense or Chitika. I see you use these both advertisement networks on your site and would like to hear your opinion about that!

Thank you for your answer!

I’ve to confess that’s not quite easy to answer to this question. For my opinion, both services are targeted to the specific kind of websites. Also, they can be limited to the language of your website. Anyway, I’d like to explain you where and why you should use any of these ad networks.

Chitika Ads

Chitika is one of the most popular pay-per-click advertisement networks on the internet. Chitika directly competes to Google AdSense service, allowing you to get relatively higher pay-per-click value than with AdSense advertisements.

It’s very popular because of that, but Chitika ads are different from Google AdSense ads in many ways:

• Pictures in Ads – They contain pictures in advertisements to target more specific products.
• Control – Publishers have the option to select keyword-targeted advertisements.
• Affiliate Program – Chitika allows publishers to make more money through own affiliate program.

These are the main features for the Chitika advertisements. They support more advertisement types and solutions, but they’re much less popular than these.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense is the most popular advertisement network on the internet. It’s the largest advertisement network for all publishers with thousands of advertisers which are going to pay you for ad clicks.

Anyway, Google AdSense have some good and different features than Chitika:

• Image and Graphic Ads – Ability to show you image or graphic advertisements and banners.
• Customization – Provides a lot more features to customize your advertisements than Chitika.
• Ad Types – AdSense provide a lot of other features where you can improve your earnings.

Google AdSense is the most popular and the largest pay-per-click advertisement network on the internet. The real power of it lays just in that – a huge advertisers database.

Chitika VS. Google AdSense

A both services have some limitations to the international publishers. For example, Chitika doesn’t allow you to display some advanced ad types to the visitors which are not from the USA or Canada. But you’ll get a batter pay-per-click rating for the international users than with Google AdSense.

In the other hand, Google AdSense would provide you the most related advertisements, because of the huge advertisers database. Chitika doesn’t have (and any other ad network) that opportunity, to show you the most relevant advertisements on your sites.

I’ve created a table that will show you the main advantages/disadvantages for both ad networks:

On the above table, I’ve used the rating system from 1 to 5 regarding to quality of the service:

• Click Through Rating – I’ve experienced a better CTR with Google AdSense advertisements. But, I’m sure that Chitika advertisements can have a better CTR on the sites with different niches than mine.
• Pay-Per-Click – I’ve used a Chitika advertisements on my site for a whole month. For every click I have get from my site, I’ve earned min. $0.11 per click. I believe this is a better than Google’s PPC.
• Related Ads – This one goes to Google. AdSense can fit nicely into any website because of the huge advertisers database. They’ll show you the most related ads. Chitika don’t fit nicely on my site and displays only 2-3 different advertisers for most of my contents.
• Ad Customizations – Chitika almost doesn’t have any advertisement look & feel customizations. In the other hand, Google allows you to completely customize how your advertisement would look on your site. Placing an advertisements on right places and with right design can drastically improve your CTR for sure.
• Additional Ad Types – Google AdSense allows you a few good additional advertisement types. Chitika right now doesn’t support so much ad types but have a good affiliate program where you can earn money by referring publishers and advertisers to this advertisement service.
• Payment Options – Chitika supports payments through PayPal payment system and you have to earn min. $10.00 to be paid through it! A very good feature which AdSense unfortunately does not support. Anyway, both services allows you to be paid through the checks internationally.

Final Thoughts

These two ad networks are different in many ways. Through they are one of the most quality advertisement solutions on the internet at this moment. AdSense has more potential to get a batter CTR but with Chitika you can make more money per click on your advertisements. But fur sure, Google will get you the more related advertisers to your content.

I’d say that Chitika is specially good, and probably work better on the sites with more targeted niche. Like e-books, apple products, digital cameras… Simply because they provide an image within their advertisements, which can attract more visitors to click on them.

To be honest, there’s no real winner in this battle. The best way is to try out both services and see how they would work on your site. In some way, Google will be better and in the other Chitika.