PPC Advertising Giant Chitika Changes Their Name to "Aritipandu"

"We don't sell bananas", says Chithika co-founder and CEO Venkat Kolluri. The name "Chitika" is a Telugu word meaning "in a snap", but people for some reason seems to "get it" as something to do with bananas :) (not kidding though).

So, basically this is the main reason behind this brand-name change which is actually a pretty big thing from a business point of view.

Chithika -> Aritipandu

There aren't that many PPC advertising campaigns that can really challenge Google's Adsense. But Chithika or now the Aritipandu, looks really promising. As publishers, they give a lot of options/features in comparison with Adsense. For instance, in Adsense, unless you're a premium advertiser, the amount of banner sizes or font changing, etc are limited.

But Chithika/Aritipandu gives you a hell lot of ad-formats starting with smaller versions to massively bigger ones, etc right out of the box!. Although the Chithika ads are only shown to US and Canada traffic at the moment, but as the time goes on that would change. According to some of the publishers, Chithitka ads actually have better CTR (click through rate) than the Adsense ads as well.

A Chithika ad - example (uses a lot of graphics...)

An ad by Google Adsense... (no graphics at all...)

But for a downside... in comparison with the Adsense (which could be the world's largest online advertising campaign), there are reasonably fever advertisers are connected in Chithitka. As a result, for a given keyword, Google can offer a lot of competing ads while Chithika/Aritipandu offers slightly smaller list of competing ads. So usually, their CPM (cost per thousand impression) are bit lower than Adsense.

Anyway, I highly doubt that the reason for changing the name Chithika has anything to do with the "banana issue", being an India based (you know when "analyzing" the CEO's, etc) or operated advertising campany... Chithika to Aritipandu transfromation could easily be a suggestion by an astrologer, as the new name being a powerful symbol than the old one thus resulting a better profits/authority.

Some may laugh even if this is true or not, but never underestimate the power of the vocal nor the symbols...

“Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws.” -Confucius