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Chitika audits commissions, axes up to 40% of money due?

From the outside, it seems like an easy business being the middleman between advertisers who want to pay for traffic brought to their Web sites and ad publishers who want to get a revenue stream from allowing companies to host advertising on their sites. Seems easy, but with the proliferation of 'bots and other ways to spam pay-per-click programs, it turns out to be very tricky to accurately set expectations with both parties, get paid, and distribute commissions accurately and in a timely manner. Worse is when you tell publishers that they've earned a certain amount of commission from their traffic, then dramatically lower that figure at the end of the month when the traffic data is audited. That's exactly what Chitika has done and it's causing some serious unhappiness in the online community:

    http://www.askdavetaylor.com/why_did_chitika_audit_my_ppc_payment.html">Why did Chitika audit - and reduce - my commission?

Whether or not the algorithm for calculating fraudulent clicks is accurate, this is unquestionably a challenge that the new company must face with its customers, lest Chitika fans move on to the next vendor with nary a look back.