OpenX Blog

We get asked all the time by our publishers how best to configure OpenX Ad Server to make it easy to sell directly. The answer is (as always) that there are many different ways, but outlined below is a configuration that should take care of many cases.

Basically, there are three main ways that I hear publishers sell their websites:

1. Sponsorship, campaigns with many custom elements (placement, integration with email lists, customised ad creative). Payment is usually a fixed fee for a period of time (e.g. homepage takeover for a month).
2. Guaranteed, campaigns with guaranteed impression targets, targeting criteria, frequency capping, and/or placement on specific web pages. Fees are usually high CPM (cost per 1000 impressions).
3. Category, where the publisher site is part of a group of websites with a very similar audience. Fees are usually charged as CPM, but not as high as direct campaigns. Sometimes, CPC or CPA campaigns that are proven to work are sold as category buys as well.
4. Remnant, where all unsold ad inventory goes for revenue share deals. The publisher gets paid if the advertiser gets results (e.g. cost per click - CPC, cost per acquistion - CPA). Affiliate programs or Google AdSense usually are loaded as remnant campaigns.

OpenX is designed to handle each of these cases. (I should point out that some of these trafficking techniques are fairly advanced but they can make a big difference.)

Sponsorship
For sponsorship opportunities, OpenX has created a campaign type called ‘exclusive’. What this means is that an ad marked as ‘exclusive’ will show EVERY time it can (e.g. frequency capping and delivery limitations are still enforced), in front of all other campaign types. When two campaigns are marked as ‘exclusive’, then they are rotated according to the campaign weight.

Guaranteed and Category Buys
Guaranteed campaigns, as well as Category campaigns, use the ‘High’ campaign type. This type will deliver before the ‘Low’ campaign type. There are two considerations when booking guaranteed and category buys:

Campaign Priority
When you sell a guaranteed campaign, move the campaign priority (note that this is different than the campaign weight!) to 7 (out of 10) or so. Make the campaign priority for category buys about a 3. What this means is that OpenX Ad Server tries to deliver the campaigns with the higher priority first, before attempting to deliver lower priority campaigns. If you are oversold, you can still modify the priorities (e.g. moving a very important guaranteed campaign up to an 8 ) in order to let OpenX know who to allocate impressions to.

Zone Chaining (Advanced Technique)
Usually publishers who sell by category have many different websites (and zones) which fall into a category. An effective way to aggregate all of these websites is to use zone chaining. Follow these steps for zone chaining:

1. Create zones for each website in the category, and place the tags in the HTML of the site. For example, Zone 1: Joe’s Auto Blog; Zone 2: Corvette Enthusiast; Zone 3: Driving Holidays.
2. Create a zone which serves as the category. For example, create Zone 4: Auto, in a new publisher called Categories.
3. In each of the site specific zones, navigate to the ‘Chain Settings’ section of the ‘Advanced’ tab, select ‘Display the selected zone instead’, and select the category zone from the dropdown list. For example, in Zone 1: Joe’s Auto Blog, select Zone 4: Auto from the zone chaining settings.

Now when you sell a category campaign, you can link the campaign directly to the category, by selecting Zone 4: Autos in the ‘linked zones’ section of a campaign or banner.

Remnant
The last type is Remnant, which is the ‘leftover’ bin for all ad impressions that have not yet been sold. Campaigns with this type will only serve if all other campaigns do not, or cannot display. Since the amount of ad inventory that goes to Remnant campaign types is highly variable (depending on the volume needs of all of your other campaigns), you should not allocate Remnant inventory to any guaranteed campaigns. Usually advertisers that have revenue share, like Google Adsense, are placed here. If there is more than one campaign, they will be rotated according to the campaign weight.

This gives you a good start on how to set up your campaigns and zones for direct selling. If you have any other advice, or questions about some specifics, please do respond by either leaving a comment below, or on our forums.

Related links:
OpenX Blog: How do you package direct ad sales?

Update:
Link to new blog has been added to this post