Chitika have announced a new product today – ShopCloud$
You can see an example of it below – but basically it is a tag cloud that highlights ‘hot products’ as well as a search box with an AJAX option that suggests products as people add letters into the search field.
When readers click on one of the links in the cloud readers are taken to a shoplinc page (if you have one it’ll take readers to yours, if not it’ll go to Chitika’s own shoplinc) where readers are given information on the product and opportunities to click on CPC ads.
There’s nothing actually in this ad unit that directly generates money but it is an interesting way to get people into your Shoplinc and I can see it working well at the bottom of posts/blogs.
Below is an example of a live ShopCloud (hopefully it will fit here on ProBlogger). If it’s not working in your browser (seems to be some issue for some with the way WP displays this) you can see one live in action here.
Surprised! K9 Web Content Filtering System blocked Chitika cloud…
[…] Problogger has a story on the new Chitika ShopCloud advertising option – “Chitika have announced a new product today – ShopCloud$ […]
neat may have to get that my sites
normally use standar chitika for my video game etc … bu this looks cooler
I already have some chtika ads on my blog. I’ve looked at a preview of the cloud on their site and it looks really good!
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Perhaps I’m being dense, but what does a shop-cloud do that a ordered list of hot-products doesn’t? And in half the space?
Michael – it does have the search feature – but apart from that it’s mainly a looks thing which will appeal to some readers.
I personally don’t think I’ll use it at this point – but have seen a few bloggers using it already in a way that integrates pretty nicely.
I guess it is about finding what ad units work on different sites and going with them.
I am testing it now by replacing all minimall with shopcloud.
A bit curious, which one is more attractive :)
Hi Darren. I recently made a post referencing this one. While researching the whole scenario, I came up with a question I hope you have the time to clarify for me. I would really appreciate it. Here it is:
“The interesting thing is that ProBlogger has the search box from Chitika’s service in his post at the same time he’s displaying Google’s search box over in the sidebar where it permanently resides. I would’ve thought this wasn’t allowed, but I’m assuming that since it isn’t searching the web, but merely ‘redirecting’ to a ASP’esque dynamic site within Chitika’s Shoplinc service, it’s okay. And since the author’s picture being displayed for both the Digital Photography Blog Shop on Chitika’s ShopLincs page and the one from ProBlogger’s sidebar look to be the same, I’m gonna guess it is, and that there’s no problem with Google’s policy here. After all, it isn’t searching the web, it’s merely accessing another website rendering search results.”
Again, thanks for your time and awesome insight on all things bloggy.
[…] I grabbed some snippets for my del.icio.us account from ProBlogger’s writeup: “a tag cloud that highlights ‘hot products’ as well as a search box with an AJAX option that suggests products as people add letters into the search field, nothing directly generates money but it’s an interesting way to get people into your Shoplinc at the bottom of posts”. […]
[…] I grabbed some snippets for my del.icio.us account from ProBlogger’s writeup: “a tag cloud that highlights ‘hot products’ as well as a search box with an AJAX option that suggests products as people add letters into the search field, nothing directly generates money but it’s an interesting way to get people into your Shoplinc at the bottom of posts”. […]
[…] Chitika have added new sizes to their ShopCloud$ ad unit (read my intro to them here).They now not only come in a 468×180 size ad but also: […]