When you sign up to an ad program, one of the first decisions you'll have to make is where to put your units. Should you cram them into the sidebar? Place them above the fold? Embed them into the text? Or relegate them to the end of the page?
Although there are some general guidelines you can follow, the best way to decide which are the best spots on your Web pages for your ad units is to test different placements and see. That can take a bit of time but as long as ad units can go anywhere, it's the only way to absolutely certain that you're getting the most out of every spot on the page.
That isn't true of Chitika's new Recommended Product Units (RPUs). These can only go in one place: immediately after a blog post.
Usually, I wouldn't be too happy about that. I don't want an ad company telling me where I can or can't place my units. If my stats tell me that a unit works best in the top left-hand corner, then that's where I want to put it.
But I'll make an exception for these units.
RPUs have been designed specifically to go after short blog posts. They consist of nothing more than three linked lines with the name of a product and the name of the online retail store. The only sign that users are looking at an ad is a tiny little "What's this?" link above the unit.
I don't think I could have come up with a better-blended ad unit if I'd designed it myself!
As these Recommended Product Units take off, I can't help but wonder whether AdSense and other ad programs won't start to think of their unit formats in a whole new way. Instead of creating formats that can go anywhere, maybe they'll start to create ad formats designed specifically for certain places on certain types of Web pages.
I don't just mean banners that look good across the top of the page or skyscrapers that run up the side. I mean banners and skyscrapers that are pre-designed to look like navigation bars or side-links.
Provided they got those designs right -- as Chitika has -- it would certainly make life easier for publishers.
And here's some great news.
According to Google's latest terms of service changes, AdSense publishers MAY run Chitika ads on the same pages as Google's ads. (Thank you, Google)
That means you can take advantage of Chitika's Recommended Product Units, ShopCloud$ and ShopLinc units to generate additional revenue on your AdSense pages!
I have just updated my best-selling Chitika eMiniMalls Secrets ebook and it is now available for instant download at:
It's Del.icio.us!
Furl It!
September 1, 2009 10:14 PM
Thanks Joel for this info. I will definetly look into Chitika.
-- Mike