This is a quote taken directly from Chitika's page at
http://chitika.com/search-targeted:
"By taking the intent targeting of search engine results and placing it onto your site, the ads are seen by people based on their search. This greatly increases the chance that users will click on the ads, as the content is directly related to their search query."
Am I misunderstanding what it says?
Yes you are.
Re-read and understand what this bit says,
... as the
content is
directly related to their search query. ...
It is ASSUMING, like so many others that your visitor came from a search query where that particular document URL was shown to the visitor. AND they actually clicked through that result. Their 'spiel' (jargon/slang for "Call to action") is based on you believing that your documents
ARE going to be shown in search query results, and searchers
WILL be tempted by your mastery of words to actually click through to your URL. AND that you believe
ALL or most visitors arrive via a Search result
It is worded in such a way to make you think that there is some way that Chikita know exactly what a searcher typed into the Google or Yahoo search box BEFORE they clicked on a particular result, and there is not.
Chikita ads are based on a limited range of words in a few chosen elements on your document. If you read the Chikita code (scripts.chitika.net/eminimalls/amm.js) you will find that these elements are;
The meta keywords element. <meta name="keywords" content="list of words"
The h1 heading elements. <h1>Some words from here</h1>
The document title element <title>This is the 'page' title</title>
and the document URL.
Certainly at one time the search phrase was carried in the URI by some browsers, so could be collected from there. However this is no longer the case.
So IF you want to improve the targetting of the ads (optimise them) the two content elements and the keywords meta are where to put
related (NOT relevant words) for adverts that you think visitors would click through to.