CafePress Launches Contextual Advertising Program

CafePress has launched TopicAds today - a type of contextual advertising program where web site publishers can have ads promoting their CafePress inventory (or someone elses) shown on their websites. How it works is that publishers specify keywords related to their content and TopicAds serves up ads relating to relevant products from their CafePress store inventory.

CafePress shopkeepers must sign up for the affiliate program separately to take part. The good news is that these ads are not considered competitive by Google and so it is fine to display them in conjunction with any AdSense units. The bad news is that publishers must rely on product sales as income from the ads, rather than click commissions. Backscratch goes to JenSense for this one.