Wow! I just received an email from Chitika Customer Service that I was rejected for inclusion in their program.

While I can't copy and paste the email verbatim -- they're probably so anal about getting bad press that they put a confidentiality agreement in their rejection emails that it cannot be distributed -- I can only wonder about why I was rejected.

Was it my traffic levels?

Well I doubt it, Diggers Realm is occasionally in the top 250 on the ttlb traffic ranks and just looking at my super silly stats entries can show you my monthly stats (the most recent in September showing 557,688 Page views from the server logs).

Could it be the robustness of content?

I'd say Diggers Realm is pretty damn robust with over 1,350 posts over the past year and a half or so. Everything from Illegal Immigration to Terrorism to Humor and my life in general.

Could it possibly be my privacy policies, ability to contact the site webmaster or adult content?

I have no problems with these that I can see.

Could it be integrity of the site?

Integrity? What's that? Oh is that the "standing by your beliefs" thing? I have that in spades. I don't know what integrity of a website means though.

Now here comes the two possible reasons that it could be.

Whether Chitika thinks it would work on my site

Well that's debatable. Really who can tell if some form of advertising is going to work on a website until it's tried. If this is their reasoning for rejecting me then they have a flawed business model in processing new enrollees in my opinion.

Language

Now I'm not sure whether they are referring to the language on the site (i.e. English, French) or bad language. If it's the former then who are they marketing this thing to since my site is in English. If it's the latter then they better go through their rolls because there are tons of places running their stuff that regularly use bad language.

In the end I am a little annoyed that they didn't give a specific reason.

I was hoping to review their service for Inside Online Advertising, but I guess I won't be getting that chance.

Maybe I'll send them an email asking for a specific reason.

Originally posted at Inside Online Advertising

Update

I decided to send them an email. It is below. This will probably ensure I'm never accepted by them, but I just found it rude to deny an application with no reason or chance for someone to correct the issue if possible.

"we do not disclose the exact reasons why your website was rejected"

Well what can I say? I find it rather unprofessional that you would "reject" a potential client without telling them why they were "rejected" from your program. If it is because of bad language, low traffic, their political outlook just say so. I think most people can take a "rejection" for a specific reason or potentially even *gasp* correct the issue that Chitika found reason to "reject" the website for.

By the way you should really use the word "denied", "rejected" is rather harsh. Doesn't "your application for eMiniMalls Paid Listings service was denied." sound a little better?

How about "after reviewing your website we found some bad language on your website and at this time are not accepting applications from websites with bad language."

Now a website owner may think to themselves "wow what a bunch of prudes over at Chitika", but at least they wouldn't be thinking "hey thanks for rejecting my application without a reason or anything to go on at all..." and potentially some bad language added to the end of that last sentence.

Anyway, I'm sure this email will be ignored, but I figured I'd just send you a little feedback on your rejection process. I was applying for multiple sites and not just http://www.diggersrealm.com , Diggers Realm is just the largest of my sites. I was going to test it on there so I could review it on my online advertising blog. I guess I won't get that chance now other then to review your poor rejection methodology.

Thanks for your time,

Update 2

Funny, the email I replied to in the email at support@chitika.com bounced and came back to me. I guess I'll have to see if they have one on their website.

Traffic Jammed