I'm trying out a new ad service called Chitika. I know it sounds like a brand of bananas (thanks to Gwen Stefani I didn't need to look up how to spell banana), but it looks like it will be 10-times better than Google Adsense for bloggers not yet ready for Blogads. Like Adsense, Chitikia runs on a pay-per-click basis, but the format is a little more eye-catching and it doesn't misinterpret your content.

The biggest problem with Adsense for a political blog is that when it scans your rant about how you think the Bush administration should be kicked out of office, it picks certain keywords and displays an ad for a "Vote for Bush" bumper sticker. With Chitika, you enter your own set of keywords when before you paste the code into your site, and it brings up a list of products randomly.

The product list is a little short right now, so some keywords won't have any products and most will just have one associated with it. But for blogs without enough traffic to convince an advertiser to lay down money a week or a month at a time, it's better than seeing a Shell Oil credit card ad on your post about lying oil executives. If you think you might sign up, click on the banner below. They also have a referral program.