OpenX Blog

Over the next few months we’re going to work to make the Openads interface and workflow better. We’re starting by reviewing the Openads UI and the first step is some interviews with Openads users.

We need your help! We are looking for passionate Openads users who are willing to participate in a paid one-on-one interview about the Openads UI in London.

To participate you will need to be in London and available for an interview on one of the following dates:

• Thursday 17th August
• Friday 18th August
• Monday 21st August
• Tuesday 22nd August

To register your interest fill in this quick questionnaire

Best Article Every Day has recently linked to some brilliant examples of the smartest (Technospot) and most unfortunate (Oddee) ad campaigns.

I’m sure most Openads publishers know the horror of discovering an ‘unfortunately placed ad’ on their website or have a personal collection of the best and worst ads that they have unwittingly run.

Share them with us, we’d love to see them!

Ever wondered how the Openads Community is distributed around the world? Well now, thanks to ClustrMaps, you can find out.

ClustrMaps plots the location of website visitors on a world map. It seemed like a fun way to see where the Openads Community is living around the world so we added the widget to the Openads blog and forum templates.

After only a few days it’s clear…. Openads users are everywhere!

There are one or two notable absences at the moment:

• Jason from UpToTen, the man behind the extremely popular 5 steps to beat the basic ad network eCPM article, clearly hasn’t checked the blog this week as we don’t have a dot on Mauritius just yet (big brother is watching Jason!).
• Also, Openads is being used on a number of sites in Africa so hopefully we’ll see them on our map soon too.

Want to be included? Just browse blog.openads.org or forum.openads.org. The map is compiled daily so don’t be too surprised if it takes a while before you see yourself.

For all those keen Openads users and developers out there who use our Subversion repository, we just wanted to let you know in advance that we’ll be making a few changes to where different versions are kept over the next few hours. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding the version you want once the update is done, as the main point of the updates is to make the repository layout clearer.

However, the most important change is that the main trunk directory will be changing from Openads 2.0 to Openads 2.3 beta. So, please make sure you switch your Subversion paths before updating, if required!

We’ve been listening to your feedback and over the next few months, we’re going to devote a lot of time to making the Openads interface and workflow better.

We’ve been chatting with as many people from the community as we can. Robert Mibus, Technical Office of Ballistic Media was one of the users who got in touch to tell us how they’d customised the Openads UI to suit their needs.

It’s feedback like this that drives Openads forward, so….

• How would you like to see user interface change?
• Do you think the workflow could be improved? Tell us how!
• Have you customised Openads UI? Let us know why and we can look to incorporate changes.

We want to hear from you no matter how small you think the change is. Post a comment or email us (hello at openads dot org)

IntrudersTV has published a video interview with Scott Switzer, Openads Community Leader.

The interview is wide ranging, giving a good high level view of the Openads project including:

• The history of the Openads
• What the Openads product is and who uses it
• How Openads came to scale to enterprise levels (billions of ads a month)
• Who Openads as a company is and our recent venture financing
• Our vision of the online advertising marketing place going forward
• What we’re trying to achieve

It’s not a short interview (8 mins long) so for those who just want the punch line, Scott finishes the interview summarising our goal here at Openads: “Our sole focus is to help publishers get the biggest possible cheque at the end of the month.”

Watch the IntruderTV interview

A while ago we asked our publishers for feedback on how to make Openads easier to use. Many users said that integration with leading content management systems would give them more time to focus on ad revenue management instead of technology integration. Naturally, we then decided that we should focus our integration efforts on the most popular CMS to start. The results, shown below, surprised us.

It appears that even today in the middle of 2007 more than half of all users are still building their own customized content management solutions or using solutions we never heard of before. Also, it appears there still isn’t a clear market leader in the field.

Of course we realise our data sample might be skewed towards developers who love to program in php and publishers who want to manage their own technology. But we are still happy to see that the two most popular systems in our poll of publishers are from our open source friends at Drupal and Joomla! Does anyone use closed source applications anymore?

In the coming months we hope to release plug-ins to a number of different content management systems but who comes next after Joomla and Drupal is still unclear. Any suggestions??

We were excited to hear that entrepreneurs Scott Rafer (MyBlogLog) and David Cancel (Compete) are using Openads in their latest startup.

Lookery is an ad network for Facebook applications. Advertisers will be able to use Lookery to deliver highly targeted advertising based on Facebook profile data.

Facebook applications have access to profile data if the user agrees during the application install process. This rich source of information could be used to target advertising at “Jazz lovers living in London” etc.

Openads is a good fit for this application. Optimizing ad delivery based on known profile information is a common targeting technique used by Openads users. (Hint: use the source parameter).

We wish Scott and Dave well in their endeavor. They are also looking for a developer with Openads experience so get in touch with them if interested.

Good luck guys!

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Are you using Openads in your business? We’d love to hear from you.

At the Openads IRC channel (freenode#openads), Noki was showing off his well deserved sticker:

It actually sparked a lunchtime conversation about what everyone has on the back of their laptops. Of course, Openads is well represented in our office. Check out Chris’s laptop:

I just got a new laptop, so I haven’t had time to build up my collection:

I am very proud of the stickers I have, of course:

• Openads. Enough said.
• Documenta (the one with 12 lines). Documenta is an art fair held every 5 years in Kassel, Germany. It showcases interesting art and artists around the world that have been influential over the last 5 years.
• Deviant Art. Deviant Art is a huge community of artists who showcase and sell their art on the site. They also happen to be an Openads user!

I am sure if you shower Oliver with compliments, (or even better - answer some forum messages or submit a patch) - an Openads sticker may make it to your doorstep.

My first job out of college was for IDX Systems Corporation (Now GE Healthcare). IDX was a large software developer, with over 1000 software developers making huge clinical and financial systems for hospitals like the Mayo Clinic and others.

I was lucky enough to participate on the ‘Web Framework Team’ at IDX - which was the pet project of the CTO at the time, Jeff Sutherland. Jeff was well known for his work with Object Technology, and is very well respected in the industry.

Jeff also was part of a group of people who founded the Scrum Development Process, which is an Agile Development Methodology. Basically, Agile Development is different than traditional software development in that there are regular daily and monthly deliverables, and the process is built to incorporate user requirements throughout the development process.

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