Chitika’s Advertising Platform Cidewalk Helps Business Owners Monetize Websites & Retailers Market Brands to Local Audiences

TL; DR: It’s no secret the online advertising space is competitive and filled with companies, large and small, trying to get their messages heard. The big question for businesses looking for effective internet marketing solutions is how to stand out from the crowd and cut through the clutter bombarding consumers every day. The Chitika advertising network displays over 4 billion targeted ads every month across 350,000 websites. Chitika’s mobile ad platform, Cidewalk, uniquely employs a balance of “art and science” to seamlessly blend native advertising into the branded content of sites. This benefits both web publishers and advertisers by creating optimal user experiences incorporating effective ads into websites without interrupting the flow of content. The company’s partners include industry giants like Yahoo!, SuperMedia, and HomeAdvisor, but that doesn’t mean its solutions are out of reach for SMBs. With affordable pricing, businesses of any size can work with Chitika to ensure their messages are broadcasted to the right audiences.

Today’s world of online advertising is extremely noisy, to say the least. Businesses must compete with countless voices in order to have their messages heard by the right audiences at the right time.

According to a recent report from Invesp, consumers are presented with an average of 1,700 banner ads per month as they browse the web. The large number of advertisements on the web reveal businesses are more than willing to allocate significant portions of their budgets toward online marketing. What’s more telling in the Invesp report, however, is the fact that only half of those banner ads are actually noticed by consumers.

While it’s important for businesses to develop online advertising strategies, it isn’t always clear how to cut through the clutter to better attract consumers. As one of the largest display advertising networks in the world, Chitika understands the challenges facing business looking to reach more prospective customers online.

Pure Juz, a Worcester-based juice bar, was a company doing everything it could to reach members of its community and get more people walking through the door. Word-of-mouth advertising was working well, and Pure Juz was utilizing its website and social media to promote its brand. However, the owners knew there had to be a way to reach a wider audience. That’s when they partnered with Chitika and employed its mobile advertising platform Cidewalk. As a result, the juice bar experienced an almost immediate boost in reach and sales.

“I had people come up to me and say they saw our ad on their phone,” said Dante, Pure Juz’s owner.

With Cidewalk, small- and medium-sized businesses can reach targeted, local audiences. The mobile marketing tool it provides pushes advertising messages across more than 10,000 mobile applications within specified geographic areas. This, along with a comprehensive marketing and analytics suite, makes Chitika an effective solution for publishers to monetize their content and for advertisers to have their messages noticed.

Chitika’s approach to effective online advertising is surprisingly simple: By understanding how content is consumed on the web, it partners with site owners and publishers to create a seamless user experience between site content and display advertisements.

The results benefit all parties. Publishers are able to make money without jeopardizing the flow and integrity of a site. Chitika’s method allows advertisers to present their messages in harmony with branded content, which makes ads seem less like noise and more like valuable information.

Displaying ads on a website, whether text, video, or audio, serves as a very convenient way for site owners to monetize their traffic. Publishers place ads on their sites to stimulate more income. In turn, businesses place ads on the web to market products and expand audiences. However, some online publishers resist displaying ads out of fear they may distract viewers from their site’s intended message.

A 2016 Forbes article noted consumer engagement is 25% more probable when employing native advertising strategies than relying on traditional banner ads. The click-through rates (CTR) of native ads are also much higher than that of banners, especially on mobile devices where CTRs surpassed traditional ads by more than 400%.

These numbers are important for both site owners and advertisers. The more clicks an ad receives, the more revenue site owners earn. In turn, the high visibility and CTRs work to draw consumers to advertisers’ brands and positively impact conversion rates.

With Chitika, interference or user distraction is a non-issue because of the manner in which the company designs and displays native advertising. Its ads blend into a site’s existing content allowing for seamless interactions that maintain the integrity of a user’s experience. Chitika employs native advertising techniques, where the ad itself follows the intended look and feel of the content in which they are placed. This works wonders to increase ad visibility and conversion among users.

For small- to medium-sized businesses, the importance of building effective, locally targeted advertising campaigns cannot be understated. Chitika recognizes the need for smaller business owners to get their messages heard in a competitive mobile environment and offers dynamic, cost-effective solutions businesses of any size an easily afford.

Chitika’s mobile advertising platform, Cidewalk, enables businesses to easily target audiences in close proximity to their locations. The platform allows advertisers to create their own mobile marketing assets and have them displayed across more than 10,000 popular mobile apps in a specified geographic area. Pricing is affordable to level the playing field for smaller businesses to have access to the same resources as larger companies.

As Mobile Marketer reported, El Basha Restaurant in Westborough, MA, was one business that experienced immediate results after using Cidewalk.

“I’ve been running five separate ad campaigns using Cidewalk for several weeks now, and I have really been amazed,” said Elie Sakhat, owner of El Basha. “I have had a bunch of customers come in during that period saying they saw my ad on their phone. Plus, I get stats showing the number of views and exactly where the ad was seen, which I really like.”

Cidewalk is able to deliver these kinds of results for business through highly effective local targeting. The platform enables large-scale exposure, with each ad potentially receiving hundreds to thousands of daily views.

Local targeting ensures ads are only being presented to potential customers living in and around a business’ area of operation. This prevents wasting precious advertising dollars targeting customers in outlying areas with low probabilities of conversion. And with a low price point, Chitika’s and Cidewalk’s solutions are affordable and can fit into budgets of any size.

There is plenty to consider when devising marketing strategies. Businesses need to understand who their audiences are, what they value, where they live, and what their purchasing habits are in order to effectively market products and services.

Chitika’s Insights team can help businesses make more informed, data-driven decisions on where to allocate advertising dollars for the best returns on investment. The talented team of data solution engineers produces a series of reports each week that uncover trends in web traffic available on the Chitika ad network. A meticulous data verification process is employed and works directly with device manufacturers to provide the most accurate and representative data available.

Chitika’s research methodology is based on established, effective methods that directly benefit any business within its network. Using data gleaned from Chitika Insights, a measurement of usage share based on ad impressions within its network is generated. An individual ad impression is measured when an individual user loads a page containing Chitika ad code. For example, if a user views five pages containing Chitika code, five individual ad impressions are measured. Businesses can leverage this information to verify how effective their ad campaigns are and redeploy campaigns as necessary.

Chitika Insights can also determine and report what browser was used for an impression, which operating system, and the mobile device used by a particular user. This information is maintained on an extensive database used for identifying user agents. This database is constantly being refined and updated as new devices and software come to market.

Chitika’s advertising network offers proven strategies to benefit web publishers and businesses seeking to reach new audiences. It’s not difficult to see the effectiveness of Chitika’s platform when looking at businesses — like Pure Juz and El Basha — that have successfully used it.

Before the grand opening of her self-described “art bar,” Paint and Sip, Mary was looking for ways to promote and spread the word to a local audience. After the business’ website was built, Mary began posting on social media and sending out promotional emails. However, these efforts didn’t seem effective enough to drown out the noise created by the pervasive banner advertisements and spam present on these platforms.

Mary turned to Chitika’s Cidewalk solution. The mobile marketing platform allowed her to promote her business by running geo-targeted local ads, but also included a “Chatting Ads” feature that allowed customers to send messages directly to the business. Cidewalk’s method of conversational marketing enabled Mary to target potential customers in her town and create a more personalized experience.

This kind of real time, direct engagement with customers helps to establish a business-customer relationship before the customer even walks through the door. Mary’s case is just one example of many where Chitika has helped a business develop an online marketing strategy that cuts through the clutter to get ads noticed and customers converted.