Chitika
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The creator of or a contributor to this page, Chitika, may have a conflict of interest with the subject of this article. |
| Chitika, Inc. | |
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| Type | Private |
| Founded |  Shrewsbury, Massachusetts (May, 2003) |
| Headquarters | Marlborough, Massachusetts, USA |
| Key people | Venkat Kolluri, Co-Founder, CEO Alden DoRosario, Co-Founder, CTO |
| Industry | Internet advertising |
| Products | eMiniMalls ShopLinc ShopCloud$ Related Products Unit (RPU) Owna |
| Website | www.chitika.com |
Chitika, Inc. is the creator of an online blogger-driven merchandising/shopping network, based in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The company was co-founded in 2003 by Chief Executive Officer Venkat Kolluri and Chief Technology Officer Alden DoRosario, both former Terra Lycos data mining engineers. The name Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka) means "in a snap" in the South Indian language of Telugu.
Chitika provides bloggers and small-to-medium web publishers the opportunity to harness their content to monetize the traffic to their site.
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[edit] Current Products
[edit] eMiniMalls
In June 2005, Chitika announced the release of eMiniMalls, a CPC merchandising unit with a goal of presenting Web publishers and bloggers with an alternative to static Web banner ads by delivering a contextual advertising service that combined online product merchandising, a dynamic recommendation engine and comparative shopping information in one unobtrusive solution[1]. The merchant and product data is provided by Shopping.com[2].
[edit] Multi-Product Unit (MPU)
On June 2006, Chitika introduced Multi-Product Units or MPU, which allow publishers to display four products in a single eMiniMall. It allowed publishers to display a wider breadth of product opinions for a given product or a wider variety of products in a single unit.
In September 2006, Chitika added referral links to all Multi-Product Units, making it easier for publishers to earn referral bonuses.
[edit] ShopLinc
In August 2006, Chitika introduced ShopLincs; offering customizable shopping portals publishers can set up to offer online visitors an “expert guided shopping” experience. ShopLincs offer hand-selected products, expert opinions, comments and reviews.
Publishers earn CPC revenue from their ShopLinc and get the additional personalization option of submitting an RSS feed from their site to automatically features relevant products in their shop.
[edit] Related Products Unit (RPU)
In September of 2006, Chitika released their Related Products Unit, or RPU. A CPC unit designed to work exclusively for blogs and news/article based sites, the Related Products Unit brings related products right to the end user reading a product-oriented story.
[edit] ShopCloud$
In October 2006, Chitika launched ShopCloud$, which display popular products in an interactive tag cloud format, where each product is linked to CPC search results featuring listings (i.e., deals, promotions and offers) from hundreds of name brand merchants. When a visitor searches for a product, such as iPod, an AJAX drop-down menu of different products will appear, offering the visitor assistance with their product searches. ShopCloud$ can be linked to a publisher's own ShopLinc or to a general ShopLinc portal.
[edit] Owna
In February of 2007, Chitika launched Owna, a widget intended for MySpace and other social networks. Owna has customizable skins surrounding a featured piece of merchandise. Chitika publishers and non-publishers are able to display Owna but only publishers can earn CPC revenue from the featured listings.
[edit] Former Products
[edit] RealContext
In March 2004, Chitika released RealContext, a matching engine that included a feedback loop that actively monitored audiences' behavior. It adapted to consumer preferences in real-time to display content relevant ads that were also targeted to match their interests.
[edit] ContextAnywhere
In August 2004, ContextAnywhere was released. Based on their RealContext targeting engine,its release was intended to give Desktop Application and Toolbar providers the ability to advertise contextually.
[edit] BlogContext
In November 2004, Chitika released this blog specific-offering. By pasting a single line of customized html code into a blog post into your blog posts, it selected and displayed relevant ads from the Chitika network.
[edit] References
- ^ Morrissey, Brian. "Product Search Hits Banner Ads", Adweek, 2005-06-20. Retrieved on [[2007-05-12]].
- ^ Tedeschi, Bob. "Internet Banner Ads Look to Get More Interesting (and Thus Less Easy to Ignore)", New York Times, 2005-07-11. Retrieved on [[2007-05-12]].
