Hope everyone had a great weekend!
Chitika (maker of eMiniMalls) got a nice PR hit (registration required) in the NYTimes today.
The CTR for banner ads is abysmal and eMiniMalls is one way to address this. When I talked with Venkat Kolluri (CEO of Chitika) last month, he said “We offer a service to publishers where they can get the best listings from multiple ad networks. eMiniMals is all about contextual product merchandising.”
I think eMiniMalls will do well on very focused blogs and product reveiw sites. I’ll keep my eye out for any reports on monetization of eMiniMalls vs. monetization of Google AdSense.
Chitika is currently partnered with Shopping.com, but it’s not an exclusive deal. Chitika will be working with other shopping comparison engines in the near future.
