One of the more common complaints that I heard about Chitika’s eMiniMalls is that publishers are unable to change the background color of the ads. This made it very difficult for publishers with any other color background to their blog than white.
In the last couple of ours this changed and Chitika added the ability to change the background/tab color by using the following code.
‘ch_color_bg = “#CCCCCC”;’
Publishers can either insert this manually into posts or use the eMiniMall code maker to do it.
I’ve also been told that the engineers at Chitika have been working on getting rid of a few bugs that were meaning the ads struggled to be shown on some browsers. The word is that they are now much more compatible on the latest release of firefox and other browsers. This could lead to better CTR if you have a significant amount of readers using such browsers.
Thanks Darren! I had just been to Chitika and didn’t see that for myself. Thanks to you I’ve already got my background changed. My next move is to re-read your post about how to work these mini-malls even better.
Thanks! Sure does look alot better on the colored backgrounds of my sites than the white did before. It helps them blend in a bit more.
Thanks for the headsup, Darren.
This is a double-edge sword for me though. With something like 300-ish unique readers a day netting me a couple of clicks on my Chitika eMiniMalls, I’m not sure if I want to change the background. In my novice way, I consider that amount of clicks to be pretty good for a relatively un-targetted personal blog and I can’t help but thinkg that the stark white background was contributing to that.
You see, unlike boring old text ads, I find the Chitika malls to be quite visually appealing. From the initial zoom in of the product up to the interactive tabs, I can’t help but think that the garish white on my otherwise subtle grey-blue background is actually an asset in drawing people’s eyes to them.
I guess the answer is to experiment with the colours and see what happens. Do I dare risk my
Ahh…finally! I shall go implement it on a black site of mine right away. Thanks Darren!
Give it a go for a day or two Jon. The worst that can happen is that you loose a few clicks which in the scheme of things might not be much money (unless you’ve found the allusive keyword that pays $100 or something :-) )
I have setup eMiniMalls on my sites and I must say that Chitika is performing excellent so far. My only concern is that they do not accept clicks from india and as most of my visitors are from there, I may loose good part of the revenue.
I hope that they would device a reliable click fraud detection mechanism in future rather than removing clicks across the board from certain parts of the world.
Excellent. Thanks.
I was hoping they would come out with a option to change the background. Thanks Darren for the update!
Yes thanks I have been getting some results slow but increasing.Thanks
Yup very nice :) Thanks.
Perhaps you should blend the background here (in the left sidebar) to see if it makes a difference.