Hey there;

I am on the road (San Jose, CA), but I wanted to let you know that PepperJam just released a beta version of their TextAds for eBay gadget. So this is not really a proper review – more of an announcement.

Bottom line, I decided to give it a try. In fact, I have it running on this page. So the links that you see in several places in this post are affiliate links to eBay.

You add some simple JScript to your site, and bingo! Pepperjam adds in text links to eBay products based on the words your page. This is pretty neat because the eBay marketplace is huge, so this could end up being a really large ad network.

Of course, since this is done in JScript, no link juice is passed. As I write this I see that PJN is picking up a link to the word “juice.” Here is an example with PlayStation3 (from the PepperJam WebSite).

However, as with the release of nearly any title that reaches millions of hands in the span of a day, the actual game had a couple of hangups — notably system lockups on both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

I have no idea about conversion and those kinds of things — all of that will need to be tested. I do love PepperJam — they are great to work with and are always innovating.  And their reporting backend is really nice — much better than some of the competition.

So, if you are interested in this, you can Join PepperJam for free and try it out. It too me 30 seconds to install it in a single page.

There is an auto mode (used here), but they also support positive and negative stop words so that you can target your ads to your content.

Here is what the PJN people have to say.

You may be asking what is Pepperjam InText Ads? In short, With Peppejam InText Ads, the advertiser's brand is linked to a relevant keyword appearing in the online content which is matched to the advertiser's ad. In the case of Pepperjam InText Ads rolling over a “hot” hyperlinked keyword results in a product advertisement from eBay being shown.

You can customize your InText code to reflect how it will display on your site. You can choose from 4 different configurations.

• White List – “White List” refers to keywords that you supply that you want converted to InText advertisements, as well as keywords from our “Auto Generate” default feature. For instance, if you have a cellular phone Web site, you may want to add keywords such as “phone,” “accessory,” and “Cingular” to your White List.
• Black List – “Black List” refers to keywords that you definitely do not want converted to InText advertisements, while showing keywords from our “Auto Generate” default feature. For instance, you may want to add keywords like “buy,” discount,” and “search” to your Black List.
• Auto Generate – “Auto Generate” happens automatically if you do not designate any White List or Black List keywords. Use this option if you'd like Pepperjam's system to automatically highlight keywords from our inventory of millions of e-commerce related keywords.
• Exclusive White List – “Exclusive White List” refers to keywords you supply that you definitely want displayed WITHOUT keywords from our “Auto Generate” default feature.

his could be a really nice companion to phpBay, which also supports PepperJam.

OK — bye for now.  I am due to present at a panel discussion on Design for Manufacturability tonight, and I still need to make some slides. Be sure to check out PepperJam — they are going places.