If I want to preview popular products in a given category (e.g., sports and outdoors), is there a way to do that? In other words, I want to see what kind of ads/products will be shown if I use "category hint" and nothing else.
You can from the chitika generate code page. In step 3 where it says 'Selected Products/Keywords' remove all of the default items. Then below select your category hint. Now go back to step 1 and click the 'Preview' button. If you click on the preview a few times the ads will change and you should see a selection of what would appear.
I tried that (in a non-GPS category), but the ads pulled up seemed kind of weak, and I wasn't convinced that I was seeing what they would actually serve. I just compared it to a category only ad on GPS Tracklog though, and the results seem to matching fairly well.