The team at Chitika have added a new feature to their eMiniMalls. today but allowing publishers to select ‘category hints’ for their ads. This means that if you choose a keyword to trigger an ad and they don’t have one to serve to your blog that you’ll have a backup ad that is relevant. Here’s how they explain it:
‘Category hint is a new targeting option by which you can pick and choose from a list of categories supported in the eMiniMalls system. Your selected category will be used as a “fallback” in the event that the system does not find an appropriate product for your preferred keyword(s).’
The categories you can select from are outlined here.
The other way to use categories is to allow them to rotate a variety of popular products from your category on your blog. For example on my digicam blog I might choose select the ‘Digital Cameras’ category and not choose any keywords – this will then show a variety of relevant ads for digicams.
So in short – if you have a keyword Chitika will try to serve an ad for that first, if it doesn’t have an ad (or if you don’t select a keyword) it will fallback on the category you’ve selected.
There are two ways to activate categories – firstly for new ads you can use their code panel in the set up process for new ads and secondly for existing ads you’ve already put on your blogs you can insert this line of code:
ch_default_category = “XXXX”;
Where XXXX is the category code listed on this page.
