I received a newsletter E-Mail from the Chitika Publisher program which discussed a recap of what they have accomplished over the year of 2006. They mentioned Chitika ShopLincs and their referral program, but they also mentioned a service that I’ve never heard of before - Chitika Related Products Unit (RPU) BETA.

This looks like a great new service for the publishers, considering the uniqueness of what it does. Basically, Chitika is starting to act like Google AdSense and offer contextual advertisements. Unlike the current Chitika Advertisements where the publisher supplies a keyword for each Chitika Advertisement box, the RPU BETA Advertisements will scan a post for keywords related to a common product like “iPod” or “PlayStation” and pull up an advertisement related to those keywords.

This service is intended for blogs (and would be great for forums), but is still in it’s BETA form and their are certain publisher requirements which are needed to be eligible to participate in this program:

To ensure quality, you must be a current Chitika publisher who has made at least $100. OR: Your site or blog must receive atleast 50,000 page views per month (We use Alexa and/or compete.com)

This looks like a fine promise to a great new service which would be released in the future by Chitika and it definitely brings itself closer to being considered a great alternative and competitor to Google AdSense!

Technorati Tags: Chitika, Publisher, contextual, AdSense