OpenX Blog

We’re experimenting with twitter as a quick and easy way of talking about the things happening around OpenX. If you are into twitter you might like to start following “openx“.

Check out the latest OpenX twitter updates.

The developer website is back up and running on the new server now.

The OpenX developer zone will be offline while we work to resolve a hardware issue. Our apologies to any community developers for the inconvenience.

This does not affect our main website, blog or forum. Most importantly, you can still find out all the new beta testing programme for our open source software.

Please check back to this blog post for updates.

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Update:
We’ve identified a server hardware failure and so we are making plans to migrate these services to a new server. I’ll post an update once we have an estimate for when these services will be restored.

Update:
The developers site is back on the air.

Even with all the excitement around the hosted version of OpenX, we haven’t lost focus on improving our flagship open source ad server. Today we are launching the public beta programme for a new version of OpenX with the release of the first public beta download.

This new version of OpenX introduces some exciting new featuresto help you:

• Write applications which interact with OpenX using the OpenX API
• Serve ads faster using the new Single Page Call tag
• Deliver more targeting ads easily using the new delivery limitations

Our thanks go out to our private beta testers who have helped shape these new features and hunt down bugs. We’d like to send out a special thanks to MindSpark for contributing the numeric comparison feature (make sure to say thanks if you see him on the IRC channel).

This will become the new stable version of OpenX once we’re confident it has had enough real world testing to ensure there are no critical bugs left undiscovered. We need your help to make this happen. Please take some time to test out the new software and report any bugs you find.

Find out more about the beta programme or download the beta and start testing today.

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Note: this new beta version doesn’t affect our commitment to our current stable product. We are currently working on a maintenance release for OpenX v2.4 which should be available in the next few weeks

On April 4th in Ancona, Italy we will hold a full day OpenX seminar in association with ANSO.

The seminar is free and open to publishers, bloggers, journalists, webmaster and pretty much anyone who is interested in online advertising.

We will have few product demos and tutorials which will show on the brand new OpenX hosted version.

The OpenX team attending is:
Melany Libraro – Marketing Director
Simon Bailey – Senior Product Manager
Matteo Beccati – Senior Developer

To see the program of the event please visit: www.anso.it (in italian)

Over the last few months, we have spent time sorting through all of the opportunities, features, and priorities that we have, and distilling these down to a clear roadmap of what OpenX plans to deliver in the coming months. It took a lot of time to deliver a simple result.

Here are the priorities for OpenX in 2008:

Stability
Our current version of OpenX, v2.4, is the first stable release since the release of phpAdsNew in 2002. Almost everything (except the interface!) has changed. We need to work on making the core OpenX server as stable as ever. We currently have about 120 outstanding bugs, and more unverified bugs from the forums that we are making a top priority to get resolved. (UPDATE: v2.4 has around 25 outstanding bugs, and the remainder are bugs for v2.5 beta)

Simplicity
Over the years, we have added many new features to an already full-featured product. We are working on moving many of the more ‘expert’ features to be optional plug-ins (check out the ‘Integration’ section below), as well as modifying the user interface and workflow to be as simple and efficient as possible. Our efforts simplifying (or eliminating) installation or upgrade fall into this category as well.

Integration
There are many people who leverage OpenX by customizing the code to work within their other systems (e.g. CMS, CRM, Financial, etc.). The problem with customizing the core code is that upgrading OpenX becomes harder when new versions are released. We have identified features which will make integration and customization of OpenX easier, including a Web Services API, Plugin Framework, and Template System.

The goal here is to make it very simple for anyone to create modifications to OpenX - and to donate their work back to the OpenX community!

Efficiency
Over the last few years, we have successfully scaled OpenX to serve many billions of ads per month. However, the infrastructure required to do this is quite complicated. We want to decrease the resources (servers, disk space, etc.) required to serve large ad volumes, as well as simplify the infrastructure needed in order to scale to huge volumes.

Why are these things important to us?
We would like to prepare OpenX for the next level - to make a solid foundation for the OpenX community to build upon. We will then become the platform for publishers, big and small, with simple or sophisticated needs, to use to manage their online advertising.

Please let us know if we are on the right track. Stay tuned for more specifics on features.

For the last 10 years, the OpenX community has believed that ad serving should be free. In fact, we contributed a large amount toward bringing ad technology CPM rates to nearly zero over the last 5 years. Google’s announcement of a free ad server, Ad Manager, validates our marketplace.

Our publishers love Google Adsense, which is Google’s ad network product. Lots of them use Adsense for the ad inventory that they cannot sell otherwise. Adsense does very well in giving our publishers revenue for unsold inventory.

With the announcement today, Google now becomes three things to a publisher:

• Ad Network provider (supplier of advertisers)
• Ad technology / analytics provider (owner of your data)
• Competitor to ad revenue to a publisher (they are also a publisher)

As a publisher, I would find this a dangerous cocktail and I would worry that it may marginalize my revenue.

Google is Your Biggest Competitor
By allowing Google Ad Manager to serve all ads on your site, you are reducing your ability to get advertising elsewhere. Because Google could ‘cherry pick’ users that are the most lucrative for Ad Sense, they will leave the other users for your remaining advertisers. Therefore, your advertisers will not get as much ROI, and leave you for another website.

The same theory goes for ad networks. If ad networks do not have access to your most lucrative users, then they will not pay you as much for them.

Google’s Margins will Increase, Not Yours
By allowing Google to serve your ads, you allow your biggest competitor for ad revenue to know how much you make from ALL advertising on your website.

Therefore, if your average CPM from Google is $0.75, and your average CPM from other ad networks is $0.50, there is no reason that Google should give you more than $0.51! Remember, it is up to Google to determine what revenue share that they will pass back to websites.

Why is OpenX Different?
The best way for a publisher to get the most revenue from their site is to create a truly open marketplace, which is controlled by the publisher:

• Control. The publisher decides who gets access to each part of their inventory.
• Independence. There is no single entity which owns all parts of online advertising.
• Customisation. The publisher can use hosted or downloadable versions, and can modify our product to suit their specific needs.

OpenX is a BIG FAN of Google Adsense
Google Adsense is probably the biggest revenue generator for our publishers. We have provided levels of integration with Adsense in the past, and are building much more integration with Adsense in the future.

By using OpenX with Adsense, you keep Google guessing how much inventory you have, and what you are making from the inventory they do not see. Therefore, they will try to give you the best price possible.

Conclusion

OpenX is not a publisher. We do not compete with you for advertisers.

OpenX is not an ad network. We do not use your data for our own benefit and not yours.

OpenX will ensure that online advertising is not controlled by a single entity.

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Related links:
FAQ: How to display Google AdSense ads using OpenX

In the fast-paced, ever-changing world of consumer electronics, Digital Trends helps us choose solutions tailored to suit our individual needs. One of the most trusted names in technology, the company publishes an online magazine covering gadgets, appliances and high-tech trends so that shoppers can make better purchasing decisions. Its website features a variety of videos, reviews, guides, news and other types of articles, all devoted to the amazing digital toys and gadgets which we simply can’t live without. Whatever the hot new product on the market is, they’re bound to have it covered.

Digital Trends has been in business for about 8 years and uses OpenX to deliver ads on their website. The firm syndicates its content to partners such as Yahoo, MSN, WorldNow (which operates approximately 50% of the local TV station websites in the US), FutureShop Canada (the largest consumer electronics retailer in Canada), and Google. Ad volumes on any typically given day come to between 500,000 and 700,000. And, as Dan Gaul of Digital Trends stresses, right now is the slow time of the year, coming right after the holiday season, but we’re sure it will pick up quickly as our credit cards recover from the ordeals of the Christmas period.

The OpenX website, forum and blog are back on the air after the failure of one of our servers on the weekend. At the moment we’re working through the process of re-enabling services on a new server. There’s still some loose ends to tidy up but we expect to be back to full capacity soon.

We’re sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.

The OpenX Team

PS. Please refer back to this post for updates.

Update:

Monday 3pm GMT: You may have trouble reaching the OpenX websites as there is an intermittent problem resolving the hostname. We are investigating this now.

After lots of blog comments, emails, and IRC / IM messages, the verdict is in.

We are going to support PHP 4 and PHP 5 for our upcoming version, 2.5 beta/2.6 stable. All subsequent versions, starting with 2.7, will have PHP 5 support only (the specific version of PHP 5 has not been decided yet).

Go PHP5!

Update:
Just to be clear on the versions: While we are in alpha/beta stages for v2.5, we have committed to PHP 4 support for this version. This will be the version that people will download once it is stable, in 3 months or so.

The next version, v2.7, will be the version that will support PHP 5 only. This version will probably be stable toward the end of 2008. I hope this gives you more of a sense of our time frames.