OpenX Blog

What Is The Goal Of Openads?

Tags: Community News

by amit.shah on June 18th, 2007

As the *non* technical founder of Openads I thought I would try to answer one question that’s been on the minds of many people in the Openads community which is, “What is the Goal of Openads?”

Let’s start with some history. Over the past seven years Openads’ software has been written by many developers around the world. But, but for the past three years, much of the development work was done by Scott and a team of ten core developers. Many of these developers contribute to our Company blog and participate on our IRC channel.

While on holiday last summer, Scott spent time writing & distributing a survey to users of Openads software. The responses were overwhelming. More than two thousand publishers spent time answering six pages of questions, and many had suggestions and requests for how the software could get better. Scott learned that there were many thousands of publishers who were using Openads to serve and manage their online advertising inventory. But, he also learned that there were many areas where the software was failing users, not working as intended or frustrating people who spent hours and days downloading, installing and configuring the software for their needs.

Scott realised that if he really wanted to produce software to meet the community’s needs then he and his team could not continue spending all of their time supporting the needs of only one enterprise customer. I met Scott soon after this revelation. We spoke about his goal for Openads — to build great software that millions of publishers could easily use without lots of technical training. To achieve this goal we knew that we would have to find investors who shared Scott’s vision.

We also had to build a business plan, create a product roadmap for Openads the software product, and a vision for Openads the Company. We were lucky to already have thousands of publishers using our product who had views, opinions and desires about where the product needed to go and what it had to do. The voices, needs and challenges of our many publishers built our product roadmap for the next twelve months. But, we also had to find investors who believed in open source software and believed that businesses that provided value for free could still become successful companies.

We got lucky. In the end we found pretty much the most experienced investors in building open source companies, Index Ventures & O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and also the most successful investor in Europe in supporting free online applications, Mangrove Capital Partners (the earliest investors in Skype). And these investors agreed with our goals for Openads.

So, what are our goals?

1. To build great adserving software that any publisher, regardless of size, can use

2. To give publishers the ability to earn more from their online advertising inventory

3. To allow as many participants in the advertising ecosystem to work together on one platform for mutual benefit

If you think Openads should be doing more let us know!

12 Comments »

Its sound very good and keep up the good work
But what I don’t understanding everyone is asking for this three features for years

1 self-signup
2 payment integration ie paypal
3 Text support like ie msn adcenter/ adword

I don’t get it why it take too long to do this, I don’t think are that complex , or there is something we don’t know are stopping those feutures to be included, Any idea when you will be able to integrate those functions?

Thanks for Great work

MyZine.com
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Comment by MyZine.com — June 19, 2007 @ 5:44 am

Thanks for the post. That clarifies things a lot! Long life openads

Comment by Matthieu — June 19, 2007 @ 8:35 am

Thank you for your comment and your product suggestions/requests.

You are correct in stating that many publishers have been asking for advertiser self sign-up and payment integration for years BUT we have only been an independent company for a month!

Before we raised capital we worked for one enterprise customer, not the Openads community. One of the reasons we raised capital was so that we could become independent and start working on improvements/additions to the software that would benefit all of you. Your product requests have been noted, are on our road map and we hope to get some more great software to all of you shortly.

So, please be patient and keep writing in with your product suggestions or ideas.

Comment by amit.shah — June 19, 2007 @ 4:27 pm

Sure it clarifies some things, but the main point was missed/avoided…How is openads going to be sustainable in the future without charging for the product?

Most investors, including VC companies are looking for returns on their investment in some way or another.

Comment by Steve — June 19, 2007 @ 5:16 pm

It is now 2008 and Paypal Integration and Advertiser sign up are still no where in sight.

Could you please stop stringing everyone along and let us know when (or if)these are going to be implemented. People have been waiting years for these, when we could just go and use a different product which already include this functionality.

Thanks
Mark

Comment by mark — January 20, 2008 @ 1:34 pm

Firstly I want to congratulate the developers for doing a great job with OpenAds. I am sure they are extremely proud of the interest in this application.

The question however is why the self-sign up and PayPal integration continue to be avoided like a plaque. Answer is that there are future plans for these features which only the business minded individuals can understand.

If money is the motive then I am sure OpenAd developers can put their money where their mouth is…integrate openAd on their website and make lots of money from an almost guaranteed advertising revenue that will come from there. afterall, I am certain this site receives thousands, if not millions of hits a day from the web community with different demographics that is attractive to any potential advertisers.

However, one suggestion for the developers is that they should study the popular and vastly successful CMS models like Joomla, and they can learn a lesson or two from there. Time they say wait for no one. People are fast to jump ship if and when they find alternatives. Those alternatives comes up when there is a need to be met and some else sees this and make those need available.

Keep up the good work folks and don’t rest on your oasis.

Just my two cents or does this cost more than that…?

Comment by foley — June 7, 2008 @ 11:44 pm