OpenX Blog

It is (as you can conclude from its name) an Open Source Ad server based on phpAdsNew. Openads has been developed by extending the phpAdsNew codebase but it has gone through some major enhancements. Basic elements have been rewritten and the overall functionality has been greatly extended. For example: the caching system has been improved, the delivery engine has been rewritten, and so have been both the channel features as well as the financial support. The result: Openads is much faster than its forerunner, phpAdsNew, despite the extended functionality.

It is crucial for websites, especially big websites, to deliver topic-related ads and be able to compare the performance of different forms and means of advertising. If you don’t want to depend on context sensitive ads forms, like Google AdSense, you need the technology which enables you to link the most suitable forms to single websites or website groups (channels). Openads gives you everything you need to do this using channels and zones which control where ads will appear on your website without having to implement the logic directly in your website templates. All you need to do is define a few zones and then group them into channels on the ad server.

Openads also allows you to send extra data to the ad server as variables which can be used to target advertising. For example you could set a variable which identifies which section of the website the ad is being displayed in or the user’s role (admin, editor, user) or status (user – logged in, anonymous user). By passing additional data to Openads you can more intelligently optimise the value of your advertising space and by experimenting with different ways to deliver advertising and comparing the performance you can considerably increase your ad-related revenues in a short space of time.