OpenX Blog

Community is a very important and unique part of OpenX. We have a team of people who continuously reach out to and speak with our community of publishers, consultants, translators, and advertisers. This team has helped build the OpenX community into the largest in online advertising.

One part of our community which is growing the fastest is our developer community. Developers have already embraced one of the upcoming features of v2.7 - a shiny new plug-in framework (well done, Monique and Chris!). A significant group of developers have already written plug-ins to OpenX.

As we build out the plug-in framework, we are in parallel building the OpenX developer community. Chris Nutting, who most OpenX developers know in the forums or IRC, is now our official Community Developer, and will look after OpenX developers full time. Chris has always made himself available to developers, and has tirelessly answered questions on IRC and the forums for the past three years. He is as passionate as they come.

Welcome to the community team, Chris!

The new release of OpenX includes an exciting new feature which promises to save online advertisers lots of time and money: the OpenX API. The new OpenX API gives developers a way to control the ad server so they can automate common tasks and integrate with other applications in a stable and reliable way.

Here’s a quick FAQ that introduces the new OpenX API, describes the key features and explains how it can help you integrate the OpenX ad server into your overall business.

What is the OpenX API?
The OpenX API is a web service. It provides an interface for other applications to control entities like advertisers, campaigns, banners, websites and zones on your ad server.

How can it make my life easier?
With a little TLC, the API can be used to streamline your business processes and automate some of the more mundane tasks to reduce the possibility of “pilot error”. Copying and pasting from one system into another is inherently error-prone, and use of the API could free up your staff to engage in more productive pursuits.

What kind of things can I do with it?
There are lots of different things the OpenX API can do to help make your systems interoperate better. Here are just a few examples:

• The OpenX API can be used to integrate your ad server with an existing sales tool, so that when you book a sale, the campaign details are automatically set up in your OpenX installation, without human intervention. You can also link your billing system to pull down statistics and billing information directly from the ad server on demand.
• Some publishers have begun to streamline data entry processes using the API, e.g. creating a simple banner upload web-form to automatically upload banners into their OpenX system.
• The more geeky users out there have already been experimenting with building interfaces into the OpenX API from other languages. We’ve provided helper libraries and example code in PHP and Java. Python and Ruby clients are already in development by community members.

Does the OpenX API give me complete control of the ad server?
We’ve chosen the most important attributes for this first release, which provides the basic functionality required by most publishers. We expect to expand the functionality in upcoming releases.

That’s all very cool, where can I get more detailed (technical) information?
We’ve written a step-by-step OpenX API tutorial with worked examples for using the API from both a PHP and a Java client which takes you through the basics of connecting to and sending commands to the OpenX API.

We also have auto-generated OpenX API interface specification. This is an intimidating document, but it does accurately describe all the classes, variables and methods which the OpenX API provides access too which makes it an invaluable tool for virgin developers. By way of example, the class associated with the Campaign object is called CampaignServiceImpl.

OpenX are developing a series of content management system plugins to make it easier for web publishers to integrate OpenX into their websites and we are ready to start private beta testing for the Drupal and Wordpress plugins.

Register to help test the Drupal and Wordpress plugins.

We’re expecting a lot of responses so please be patient. We will get back to everyone within the next few weeks.

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Related links:
Tell us what other CMS plugins we should develop.
Wanted: Joomla! publishers to help test an OpenX module

The OpenX team has released an update to the beta version of our open source ad server.

This release (v2.5.69 beta) resolves a security vulnerability and includes over 70 other bug fixes and enhancements. As always, we’d like to send out our thanks to everyone who has helped us to identify and resolve issues.

See the release notes for more details or download the latest OpenX beta today!

Search advertising is very mature - there is a well structured data model for advertisers to use. Interestingly, display advertising still does not have a structured model for using the data exposed from websites - it is still a largely fragmented market. This needs to change in order for websites - especially small and medium sized websites - to make more money from online advertising.

When an advertiser buys ads based on no data (e.g. ‘blind’), this means that the advertiser has no clue of the following things:

• What time of day (or how evenly distributed) the impressions will occur
• Which websites will display the ads
• What types of users will be viewing the ads

If data is provided to the advertiser, (e.g. the ads will display during the day on Digg for tech focused males), the price advertisers pay can increase up to 10x or more for the same ads.

That is a big price difference!

The more data transparency that advertisers have about the site, users, and timeframe, the less risk they associate with the purchase, and therefore the price advertisers are willing to pay increases. In addition, organizing data into simple straightforward structures that advertisers understand will again increase revenues.

The process of exposing and organizing website data is called ‘expression’. There are a number of types of expression that can be done by website publishers:

Content Expression
There are a number of parameters that can be exposed about website content. For example, letting advertisers know the URL of the page gives amazing insight into the type of user and their frame of mind when viewing advertising. Furthermore, packaging a website in terms of category, keyword, expertise level, etc., will give advertisers a strong sense of what types of users they are reaching.

Demographic Expression
Demographic expression refers to attributes about the user viewing the website. The easiest data to gather is the country, city, time zone, etc., where the user is located (OpenX uses geo plugins to provide this information). If a website stores other demographic information about users, such as age and income bracket, gender, etc., this is also extremely useful to advertisers.

Behavior Expression
By ‘remembering’ the way users behaved in the past, valuable insight can be provided to advertisers. For example, if a user looked at a VW Jetta the last time she was at an automobile site, this information can be valuably shared with an auto advertiser on the next visit - even when the viewer is browsing other, less lucrative pages on the site. In addition, a user’s behavior on multiple sites can be stored - providing even more value to advertisers.

Beyond the expression of site data, there are a few things that a website must also consider:

Privacy
It is very important to be completely straightforward with website users about how their information is used. This includes providing a simple, easy to read privacy policy that details what information is provided to advertisers, and in what form (non-personally identifiable information, aggregate information, etc.)

Organization
One of the most important considerations before undergoing site expression is how expression is organized. Some large websites (like the Comscore 100) can get away with expressing their site however they wish - because there is so much inventory, advertisers will take the time to understand unique attributes of the site. Small or medium sized websites do not have that luxury.

How Can OpenX Help?

• Introduce Standards - making similar ways of expressing inventory for all websites will make it easier for agencies to buy inventory at higher CPM’s.
• Data Services - by allowing publishers to pass user data to advertisers (if they wish), advertisers will know more about the people viewing the website, thus making the website more attractive to advertisers.
• CMS Integration - OpenX is working on integrating inside content management systems and blogs in a seamless way, so that inventory and data can be expressed by default.

These services will be a first step in our mission of increasing transparency and getting an increased, fair market value for advertising in the OpenX publisher community.

A new OpenX beta update is available for download. We were very excited to see how stable the first beta was but, as you would expect, there were lots of bug fixes and enhancements to be made. In fact, in this update we’ve closed 90 bugs!

If you haven’t tried the new OpenX beta yet, now is the time. You can find out about the new features included in the beta programme.

Existing beta testers will be interested in the key bug fixes and enhancements we’ve made:

• The OpenX API can now be used to link banners with zones and retrieve ad tags
• Distributed Statistics is now able to run more efficiently
• Key features including companion positioning, geotargeting and flash banner conversions have been improved.

See the release notes for more details or download the latest OpenX beta today!

My role at OpenX is to lead the OpenX community, and drive the product vision, while my title remains ‘CTO’. A ‘true’ CTO would spend more time on the OpenX architecture, designing and leading development of a next-generation technical infrastructure. A better title for my job will be ‘Community Leader’.

We need to hire a CTO who can own the technology vision, and lead our excellent team of engineers to build OpenX to greater levels. As you can imagine, this is a very important position, and one that I personally will take a lot of time and effort to find the right person.

More details about the kind of person we are looking for are below. In summary, we are looking for an experienced, practical, energetic person who has previously built a huge global internet application, who wants to truly change the online advertising world.

Working at OpenX is a unique experience. We are a start-up that has tens of thousands of businesses globally depending upon us for their core revenue. We are positioned to transform a confusing online advertising marketplace into one that is transparent, efficient and open.

OpenX CTO Job Description

Responsibilities:

The CTO is the owner and driver of OpenX’s global technology vision and execution

Ideal Characteristics:

• Proven track record building and leading a world-class technology team
• Ability to develop and clearly articulate a compelling technology vision and inspire the team and community
• Strongly architectural mindset and approach. Ability to see the forest through the trees
• Global operating experience and outlook
• Experience building products for large communities of users
• Experience managing multiple parallel development work streams from concept to design and implementation and ongoing refinement
• Direct experience of deploying architecture and systems at great scale (e.g. 10K+ transactions per second) with very high availability and low cost
• Experience managing individuals and teams conducting complex, science-based algorithmic and optimization work
• Strong business partnership. Our executive management team need a real partner, not a requirements ‘order taker’! This means that the CTO must be very commercially “aware” and able help shape our business direction
• Experience in the online advertising space, especially: ad serving, ad targeting, marketplace design, yield optimization, self-serve participation, large scale transactions infrastructure etc
• An Open Source guru who is comfortable working with and managing developers around the world is a major plus
• Deep passion to transform the game and win

Please let us know if you know someone who fits the bill. Please send inquiries to hr@openx.org.

The OpenX Team has been quietly working away on an OpenX plugin for Joomla!. In fact, we now have a working prototype and we need feedback. With this in mind, we are planning a live demo next Wednesday at the OpenX office in London.

Who is invited?
We would love for London based publishers to come and visit our office and attend the session. For those who can’t come in, we also have a limited number of seats available to join the session online.

How do I register?
Please complete this short registration survey. We’ve included a couple of questions about what you would expect from an OpenX plugin for Joomla!

What other ways can I get involved?
There will be lots of other opportunities to help out. Please join the OpenX Publisher Feedback group if you would like to help the product team develop new products and features.

How can I track your progress?
Keep an eye on our blog or join our mailing list to keep up to date with OpenX product news and community announcements.

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Related News:
Joomla! recently interviewed Scott and discussed how Joomla! and OpenX are working together. Read the full interview here.

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

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.