Chitika have announced that they are to address the issue of “curiosity clicks” by de-linking some of the text in their ad units. The result? Most likely a dramatic decrease in CTR and revenue for publishers.
They’ve said that they will give an extra 10% bonus to publishers for two weeks to compensate for the loss in earnings, but frankly, that just doesn’t sound right to me. They’re cutting earnings, permenantly, but compensating for two weeks?
Personally, i’d have thought that not compensating would have been a better move on their part. They have enough momentum to ride out a bit of publisher backlash, and at the end of the day, the fact that they are “compensating” seems to be an admission of guilt, when in fact they’re just addressing a pretty valid advertiser concern.