OpenX Blog

2011 was a phenomenal year for OpenX. Not only did we scale to massive proportions—handling more than one trillion ad requests—but we’ve helped thousands of companies build their digital ad business.

We’re doing this with OpenX Enterprise, our breakthrough ad server, and OpenX Market, our massive ad exchange, which can be used separately, but are ideally packaged together into a unified Revenue Serving solution.

Just ask publishers like Groupon, Business Insider, The New York Post and thousands of others.

So how did we do in 2011?

• OpenX handled more than 1 trillion ad requests
• OpenX Market grew more than 9X and on an typical day sees 2.5 billion ad requests and gets over 8 billion bids
• OpenX Enterprise more than doubled in revenue and customers
• We introduced our Mobile product in November, and we’re already running 8 billion impressions per month
• We also launched a huge array of new products, such as Audience Segmentation, brand blocking, domain level reporting, and many other capabilities
• Our ad quality team reviewed and categorized 85,702 publisher domains for OpenX Market
• We’re now running multiple datacenters around the world (including Asia, Europe, and the United States)
• Our business in Japan continues to grow exponentially

In 2011, OpenX not only achieved something amazing as a company but ultimately drove massive growth for our customers. And we think that really matters.

Calling all publishers - get ready to accelerate your revenue in 2012!

You’ve had a GREAT year. You’ve worked hard to create amazing content, and traffic to your site (or network) has seen significant growth as a result. But what about your monetization goals? Have you met them this year? As we all know too well, traffic alone doesn’t pay the bills.

This is where OpenX Enterprise can help you achieve your business goals in 2012. We provide breakthrough digital ad technology to help you manage all your ad inventory in one place in real-time, a concept we refer to as ‘revenue serving’.

Sign up HERE

Join us for our last OpenX Enterprise ad server demo of 2011 and learn more about how our secure hosted solution can help you manage all your revenue channels. The session will take place this Wednesday, December 21st and will be hosted by Business Development Director Aron Gibson.

This lively demo will feature a thorough tour of the OpenX Enterprise user interface and OpenX Market, our real-time bidding ad exchange that is integrated seamlessly into the ad server.  A dynamic Q&A session will follow the demo, and one lucky participant will win a Starbucks gift card!

There’s never been a better time to take control of your revenue. Sign up here for the last OpenX Enterprise Ad Server demo of 2011!

Smart media buyers understand the inherent benefits of ad exchanges: Impression-level buying, granular audience targeting, killer ROI.

Thanks to OpenX Advertising Console, all media buyers can get into the game. To learn more, Paul Martechinni, Head of Marketing at OpenX spoke with Ian Davidson, Director of Business Development at OpenX.

Ian Davidson, Director of Business Development at OpenX

Paul: What is the OpenX Advertising Console?

Ian: OpenX Advertising Console is a web-based gateway into OpenX Market, OpenX’s global ad exchange where buyers bid on premium inventory via a real-time auction. And it provides all the tools buyers need to target their exact audience, manage campaigns, and view detailed campaign performance in real time.

Paul: Do buyers need a real-time bidding engine?

Ian: Absolutely not. We created the Advertising Console specifically for buyers who want premium inventory at scale and run their campaigns themselves, but don’t have access to a real-time bidding tool. We see the Advertising Console as a way to help all media buyers take advantage of the efficiencies and targeting capabilities of ad exchanges, regardless of their technical environment. All of our inventory is available via real-time bidding, but for those that do not have real-time bidding capabilities, Advertising Console allows them access to the Market.

Paul: Who uses OpenX Advertising Console today?

Ian: The Advertising Console is used by anyone who needs to reach a specific or broad audience. Advertisers can use it to run retargeting campaigns if they want to engage with people who’ve been to their website to target other specific audience segments, or even brand new audiences.  Many types of companies buy from Market through the Advertising Console, including direct brands, agencies, ad networks, and DSPs.

Continue reading to learn more about the OpenX Ad Console and how to get started!

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Dix Communications (DixCom) is a family owned business that, for over 100 years, has published local newspapers and operated regional radio stations. In the early 1990’s, the company launched several online versions of its newspapers, becoming an early pioneer in digital publishing. Paul Martecchini, Head of Marketing for OpenX asked Andrew Dix, President of Dix Communications Internet, to share his insights on how digital publishers can generate more ad revenue.

Andrew Dix, President of Dix Communications Internet Division

Paul Martecchini [PM]: Let’s start from the beginning, tell us about Dix Communications.
Andrew Dix [AD]: We’re a smaller media company, started in Ohio in the late 1800’s. We own print products: daily newspapers, community newspapers, and associated shoppers and magazines. And we have radio stations in several markets, including Maryland, Ohio and Florida.

PM: Tell us about your early forays into online publishing.
AD: We were one of the first newspapers in the state of Ohio to have a website. In the early 1990’s, we began moving our products to the web. We also rolled out niche sites that were closely tied to the local markets.

PM: Did you monetize your early sites?
AD: Back in the ‘90s we weren’t doing that much monetization, however, we recognized the importance of display ads, even in our small markets. That’s how we first learned about OpenX.

We worked with a lot of ad networks that sold our inventory, but sometimes we wondered if those companies could cover the checks they sent us. And they were slow to pay. It was a bit of the Wild West back then.

Continue reading to discover how DixCom more than doubled their revenue on non-guaranteed inventory using OpenX Market!

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OpenX takes security seriously. If ever we find an issue, we address it quickly and communicate any updates as soon as possible.

Recently we became aware of a security issue with OpenX Source v. 2.8.7 and, in response, we’ve now issued and released OpenX Source v. 2.8.8 to address it. This patch applies only to our download product, OpenX Source. It’s important to note that OpenX Enterprise, in both its 3.0 and 2.8 versions, is not affected.

It’s critical to the safe maintenance and operation of any software that you not only maintain a current version of the software, but also take steps to regularly audit accounts that have access to your system. To that end, we strongly encourage you to upgrade to the latest version if you are running OpenX Source v. 2.8.7.

To download the latest release, please click here.

Remember, if you have not done so recently, you should perform a security audit before upgrading to the latest version. In addition to the steps listed in that post, if your config file was not locked and someone was able to gain unauthorized access to your install, it is possible that they could have installed/upgraded a plugin containing malicious code. Like with any vulnerability, if you discover foreign material or scripts on your machine it is best to reinstall your OS or obtain another server from your ISP.

Raj Chauhan, our GM of Publisher Business, presented the “Top Real-Time-Bidding (RTB) Trends Affecting Publishers” today at the Business Insider’s IGNITION: The Future of Media conference in New York.

Raj delved into the top 5 most important trends, including how ad exchanges have fundamentally changed the way publishers monetize their inventory and how new publisher controls (pricing, buyer selection, and ad quality) are powering a new generation of private marketplaces to grow revenue and improve efficiency.

Raj Chauhan at the mic just before presenting the "Top RTB Trends Affecting Publishers"

Raj was then joined by Andrew Dix, President of Dix Communications Internet (a newspaper and radio company), who revealed how they used OpenX Market–a leading ad exchange–to double the yield on their online ad space.

Raj in conversation with Andrew Dix of Dix Communications

Established in 1995, Lycos is one of the original and most widely known internet brands in the world, evolving from one of the first search engines on the web into a comprehensive network of social sites, as well as leading provider of web-publishing tools. Two years ago Lycos adopted OpenX Enterprise to serve ads. More recently, Lycos began selling non-guaranteed inventory through OpenX Market. To see how things were going, Paul Martecchini, Head of Marketing for OpenX, spoke with Kristyn Lyons, Ad Operations Manager, and Colleen Stephan, Lycos’ Product Manager for Search.

Kristin Lyons, Ad Operations Manager at Lycos

Paul Martecchini [PM]: Let’s begin with a quick update on Lycos: how has your site evolved?

Colleen Stephan [CS]: We started with search as a flagship product, and it’s still a core function. Through our acquisitions of Tripod and Angelfire, we now offer tools for blogging, web publishing, and hosting. We also offer casual gaming through Gamesville and email with Lycos Mail. Last October, we were acquired by Ybrant Digital, a global ad agency, and Lycos is now their U.S. presence and arm.

PM: How are you using OpenX?

Kristyn Lyons [KL]: We use OpenX Enterprise for ad serving, and we put our non-guaranteed inventory on OpenX Market.

PM: Why did you choose OpenX Enterprise?

KL: It had all of the bells and whistles we needed, such as granular targeting capabilities and great reporting. Also, we really like the customer service; whenever we need a new feature, we just call-up our OpenX team and they implement it right away, and that helps us be strategic partners to important advertisers. For instance, we were working with a partner that had very specific pixel implementation requirements. Our OpenX team responded very quickly, and we were able to hit our advertiser’s I/O goals.

Continue reading to discover Ms. Lyons’s tips to other publishers and how Lycos quadrupled their yields with OpenX Market!

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The OpenX booth at ad:tech NY was teeming as always with the industry’s top publishers, DSPs, and networks.  Visitors were abuzz with the recently unveiled OpenX Revenue Guarantee where we guarantee revenue to publisher’s sending inventory in OpenX Market, our fast-growing ad exchange.  If you haven’t read about it, check it out: OpenX Revenue Guarantee.  News of this old-fashioned, “money-where-our-mouth-is” guarantee spread and led to other engaging conversations. Conference-goers were keen to learn about our mobile capabilities, as well as watch live product demos from our expert sales engineers.

On Wednesday, OpenX was a proud participant in the Pub Crawl serving up pints of Brooklyn Brewery Microbrews.  That evening we co-hosted a roaring cocktail party with AdKnowledge at La Pomme.

Revelers at the OpenX cocktail party at La Pomme

OpenXer Aron Gibson (right) with Xavier Toulemonde (left) and Gunnar Larson (center) of NetworkGlobal Companies

OpenXers Raj Chauhan (left) and Ajitpal Pannu (center) with Aaron Beck of CrowdGather (right)

OpenXer Nancy Tran (center) with William Tsui (left) of Adknowledge and Azeem Ansar of BluTrumpet (right)

OpenXers gather round for a snap!

On Thursday, our Business Development maven Tim Sims presented “Five RTB Trends Affecting Publishers” in the Marketing Masters Theater.

It wasn’t only ad:tech that kept OpenX execs busy in New York, a number of other events throughout the week saw OpenXers attend and participate. Qasim Saifee, GM of Media Services, participated in the panel debate titled “RTB Love Stories: Real-Time In The Real World” at the OMMA Display event on Monday, which – in case you missed it - you can watch again here. Qasim also spoke about “Driving Performance in Display” at the FirstMark Capital Online Marketing Summit on Wednesday, giving an overview of the display market and prompting interesting questions about the future of display advertising.

Today at the IAB AdOps Summit, OpenX will introduce the winners of the Impression Exchange Implementation Challenge. Matt Plummer, our Head of Product Management, along with others on the IES working group, wrote the Impression Exchange Guidelines which set the stage for today’s competition.

With our deep ad technology experience, OpenX became involved in the effort because we understand publishers and wanted to make sure the guidelines made sense for them. The benefits are clear:

1. Detect and resolve count discrepancies early

2. Accelerate payments through improved billing efficiency and the elimination of ‘make-goods’

3. Keep publisher reputations intact regarding delivery

Companies actively adopting IES include agency ad-servers, publisher ad-servers, and vendors. But for the Impression Exchange Solution to work, adoption across the industry is key – both the agency and publisher ad-servers must implement IES. The awards today are a first step in turning the guidelines into reality.

And the winners are… VINDICO and ADTECH.

Experience has shown us over and over again that massive competition on OpenX Market, our ad exchange, drives up CPMs and sell-through rates.  With 8 billion bids per day from thousands of advertisers, our scale helps publishers earn top dollar for each and every impression.

We’re so confident of our track record maximizing publisher ad revenue, that we’ve initiated a special program called the OpenX Revenue Guarantee:  publishers guarantee us their inventory, and OpenX Market guarantees a specific amount of revenue for it.

But how can we do this?  It’s not bravado… and this is not some hollow promise.  It’s a good, old-fashioned “money-where-our-mouth-is” guarantee demonstrating confidence in our ad exchange technology while also eliminating any risk to publishers.  OpenX has a very sophisticated auction engine that enables dozens of premium websites -– such as Breaking Media (publisher behind DealBreaker.com, Fashionista.com, and AboveTheLaw.com) and Brand Technologies (publisher behind Celebrity-Gossip.net and GossipCenter.com) –- to get higher yields for their inventory.

Just ask David Minkin, Co-founder at Breaking Media. In a recent interview, Mr. Minkin explained how OpenX Market more than tripled the revenue he earned from his indirect (or what we call ‘non-guaranteed’) inventory. Then OpenX stepped up and guaranteed him a fixed amount for that inventory, so he could make financial projections he could depend on. He said it best, “Their guarantee is an incredible deal for us. Our revenues are up and we can count on it.”

In OpenX Market, we’ve integrated with over 30 RTB buyers who bid in real-time for choice ad inventory.  The outcome:  publishers gain the benefits of real-time pricing, real-time data, and real-time results.  Moreover, publishers can set price floors for their inventory, whitelist or blacklist specific brands, and block entire categories of ads to avoid channel conflict and maintain a great user experience.

A key point to remember: the OpenX Revenue Guarantee provides just the minimum level of revenue you can expect from your inventory.  If advertisers bid higher than our minimum projections (which they often do), you get to pocket the upside.  So you generate the highest possible revenue, while getting clear visibility into how much you’ll earn each month.

Does your SSP put money where their mouth is?  OpenX does.  To see if you’re eligible, contact us today and we’ll not only meet, but exceed your expectations.