Chitika announced that it is kicking off the holiday advertising season with a promotion that lets brands test drive its rapidly growing blog network for their advertising. For the month of October, Chitika is offering 500 free clicks to advertisers that sign up for its Blogtober Challenge promotion.

“This holiday shopping season, which effectively starts this month, blogs will play a larger role than ever,” said Venkat Kolluri, chief executive officer at Chitika. “As we’ve started talking with more advertisers and media buyers, it is clear brands are excited about the ways our eMiniMalls blend branding with direct marketing in a powerful, self-contained ad unit. Once a brand tries this approach, we believe the results will keep them coming back to blogs for many holiday seasons to come.”