OpenX Blog

As John mentioned in his post a couple of weeks ago, one of the major changes in v2.8 is the introduction of a new plugin framework. This framework allows developers to customize many aspects of the ad server functionality.

Wherever possible, we’re trying to build new features as plugins so that you don’t need to upgrade the whole ad server to take advantage of new features like the bundled plugin for OpenX Market, improved GeoIP targeting data from NetAcuity or an upcoming in-stream and overlay video ad plugin we will be including in the next ad server release.

There are currently four main ways that a plugin can interact with the ad server (mapping to the four main areas of the application):

• Web Service API - Plugins are able to define their own method calls to be accessed through the OpenX API
• Maintenance - Plugins can add tasks to the hourly process which summarizes statistics and assigns priorities
• User interface - Plugins can:
  • Add pages to the menu system to add new features and functionality
  • Define new types of banners
  • Generate custom invocation tags
  • Provide additional (Excel) reports
  • Override the user authentication system
• Delivery Engine: There are a number of hooks in the delivery engine at which plugins can register and execute custom code during the ad selection/rendering/logging process.
  • The front-controller allows new delivery scripts to be provided in a plugin
  • Sophisticated targeting rules can be evaluated to control banner delivery
  • Pre/post processing of a banner HTML
  • Events and actions (requests, impressions clicks etc) can trigger plugin events
  • Replace the file-based cache store with something else (e.g. memcache)

We’ve put together some tools to help budding plugin developers get started creating their first plugin including a toolbox with a plugin builder component and a demo plugin showing the kinds of things that can be done with the plugin framework.

And of course you can always jump into the #openx chatroom to ask (or offer) help!

Earlier today, we were excited to formally announce the launch of OpenX Market. If you’re a publisher, the good news is that with OpenX Market you now have the means to reach a broader set of buyers who see a lot of value in your audience but would otherwise have a difficult time discovering your ad space. It’s all about making these connections much more simple and scalable.

We’ve worked hard to make OpenX Market as easy to use as possible, whether you are using OpenX Download or OpenX Hosted.

• For OpenX Download: OpenX Market is seamlessly integrated with OpenX 2.8, which includes the new OpenX Market plugin. This plugin installs automatically: you do not need to download any files apart from OpenX Ad Server. To access the Market, all you need to do is log in as the administrator and go to My Account > OpenX Market to associate your OpenX.org account.

• For OpenX Hosted: OpenX Market is already part of the product. From the campaign screen, you simply enable campaigns for OpenX Market with a single checkbox.

Check out these additional resources to help you learn more about using OpenX Market:

• OpenX Market Video Tutorial
• Get Started with OpenX Market page
• OpenX 2.8 User Guide for OpenX Market

Take a look and get started with maximizing your revenue through OpenX Market today!

When people were getting all creative in fourteenth century Italy, they didn’t think of themselves as driving a renaissance. That only became clearer later. I think something similar (on perhaps a less exalted level!) is happening in online advertising today.

Last week I gave a talk at Web 2.0 in San Francisco about this. The theme was why - despite plenty of gloom about the advertising space – we’re actually in a period of great innovation that is going to really drive value over the next couple of years.

I noted a couple of interesting trends, notably the current massive asymmetry in economic value creation between search vs. the rest. I proposed a few explanations for this.

I also shared a perspective on some of the important, emerging themes (or solutions) that are going to help drive longer-term economic value and mentioned some of the companies that are working in these spaces. The key themes covered:

1. The increasing importance of people > places.
2. The drive to deepen understanding of people’s interests and intent, not just their context or immediate actions.
3. The move towards business models that pool audiences (aka people) and thus help to “de-fragment” (I know, that’s not a pretty word :-)) the rapidly growing tail.
4. The increased (and very necessary!) focus on ad relevance in the non-search world.
5. The advent of more balanced overall usability for users – incorporating (hopefully) a deeper and better symbiosis of content and advertising.
6. The drive to enable tens and hundreds of thousands of advertisers to participate in all online advertising formats, not just search and contextual.

Here’s an example slide:

The full deck can be found here. There are undoubtedly other important trends and players. Would love to get your thoughts.

With the recent release of OpenX Ad Server 2.8, a very powerful addition to the product was added with the new plugin architecture. This new framework is a first for our industry: no other ad server offers an extensive plugin architecture. A plugin architecture provides hooks into many of the core engines to allow developers to write code (plugins) that extend or change the functionality of these engines such as targeting, banner types, or delivery. We believe it will really help accomplish our vision of making OpenX Ad Server the advertising foundation for any business serving ads on their web properties by powering innovation in a meaningful new way. To download OpenX Ad Server 2.8, please click here.

We think a few key aspects of the plugin architecture are especially worth noting:

• First, the plugin architecture extends most aspects of the ad server from the targeting engine to the delivery engine to the administrative user interface. This extensibility and flexibility empowers a broad range of innovation that allows you to customize the ad server and streamline your workflow.
• Second, plugins are outside the core application, which allows you to (1) upgrade a particular plugin without needing to upgrade the core or (2) upgrade (or patch) the core code without overwriting modifications made via plugins. Within the ad server, you can automatically check for new updates to a plugin and upgrade it with two clicks. No messy installations!
• Third, unlike changes to the core code that are required to be contributed back as open source to the community by our GPL license, commercial proprietary plugins are not required to be contributed back. Many developers have nontheless already begun to contribute open source plugins.
• Fourth, we’re providing the OpenX Developer Toolbox (Beta) for those who want to get started developing their own plugins. If you’d like to download the latest version, please click here.

There are many plugin efforts already underway. Next month, we are planning to launch a video ad plugin based on IAB’s VAST workflow and compatible with several leading video players. This exciting addition to the ad server will fully utilize the plugin architecture to extend the product in a completely new direction. Many more plugins are also being planned or are already underway and we believe this powerful system will allow our users to take their advertising efforts to the next level. Stay tuned!

Hello,

I spent some time on our IRC chatroom discussing the release of the new downloadable version of OpenX Ad Server (OpenX Download 2.8). It was great to hear from the developers about how the new UI is being received and which additional features they’d like us to consider.

The best way for OpenX to continue building ad products that publishers love is to get continuous, constructive feedback from the community, and to incorporate it into our future product roadmap.

OpenX Download 2.8 has been out in the wild for a few days now and we’re eager to hear what you think: 

1. What new features of v2.8 do you find really useful?
2. How has OpenX Ad Server made an impact on your business?
3. What are the additional features you’d like to see in future versions?
4. What else can we provide to make OpenX more useful to you as you build your online business?
5. Are you using the API or plugin framework to do something interesting?

We will not only use this information for future product roadmaps, but also to build case studies about how folks use OpenX to optimize their ad serving.

Please either leave your feedback in the comments, or contact us. Your feedback is truly appreciated!

Today we’re delighted to announce the launch of the newest version of OpenX Ad Server. More than any OpenX update so far, OpenX 2.8 is a major step in helping us help you to grow your business online.

Among the many new features in 2.8 is our plugin framework, which allows you to customize OpenX Ad Server in literally limitless ways. You can build your own plugins, use existing plugins built by the OpenX community or have folks like OpenX Consultants build them for you. And you can expect lots of new functionality via plugins like video ads and mobile over the next few months!

Another key feature of 2.8 is the new OpenX Market plugin, which allows you to seamlessly flow your inventory directly into OpenX Market to maximize your revenue. It’s very easy because the Market is now natively integrated into the ad server. It’s risk free because a Market ad will only ever show if it beats your existing campaigns’ CPM. And it’s revenue maximizing because it flows your ad inventory into a large, open market where multiple classes of advertisers bid for each impression in a full real-time auction.

Key benefits of 2.8 include:

• Easier Customization: The plugin framework allows you to customize your ad technology and build any plugin you need. You also have access to additional plugins developed by the OpenX community, OpenX and third parties.
• Revenue Maximization: The OpenX Market plugin allows you to maximize revenue by flowing your inventory directly into OpenX Market.
• eCPM Optimization: You can further maximize your advertising revenue by using an entirely new eCPM-based revenue optimization system for ad serving prioritization across your remnant CPM, CPC and CPA campaigns.
• Improved Scalability: Raw data storage has been overhauled by a re-architected distributed statistics technology (bucket logging) to provide significantly improved scalability and reduced storage requirements.
• Enhanced Usability: The first time you log in to OpenX 2.8, you’ll see significant UI improvements to make OpenX even easier to use.

If you’d like to download OpenX 2.8, immediately begin to take advantage of all its features and gain instant access to OpenX Market, please click here. To upgrade to 2.8 from any prior version of OpenX, please click here.

Or, if you’d prefer to take full advantage of the benefits of using OpenX while letting us run the software on our infrastructure, please click here to learn more about OpenX Hosted.

Lastly, thank you very, very much indeed to all the many members of the OpenX community who suggested ideas, tested the Beta, provided feedback and worked on the translations for the new version of OpenX. Thank you so much!

One of the key features that we provide with the OpenX Ad Server is a free GeoIP plugin that can target ads based on a visitor’s country information. For even more precise targeting, such as at the city, postal code or area code level, users can purchase an upgraded GeoIP database package from MaxMind or other vendors.

Now Digital Element, a business unit of Digital Envoy, has developed plugins for OpenX 2.4, 2.6 and the soon-to-be-released 2.8, making it easier than ever before to integrate their industry-leading NetAcuity IP Intelligence technology for improved ad targeting accuracy. NetAcuity allows publishers and ad networks to serve ads based on a comprehensive set of parameters, including country, region/state, DMA, city, US area code, US/Canada postal code, connection speed, and internet service provider.

And through a special arrangement with Digital Element, OpenX users receive discounted pricing when they sign up for the NetAcuity plugin.

For more information about the NetAcuity Technology and the OpenX plugin, please visit Digital Element’s website.

We’re excited to begin a new series of OpenX Customer Spotlights! And to kick off the series we’re especially excited to spotlight FamilyLink.com, a company that provides innovative tools to connect families. Of special note is FamilyLink.com’s We’re Related product, which allows individuals to find relatives on Facebook, connect with family members, build family trees, and share news and photos. It’s actually a top-five application on Facebook and it is the number one family application!

FamilyLink.com has been an OpenX customer since 2008 when they downloaded our open source software. In late January 2009, they shifted to the Enterprise version of OpenX Hosted. As part of the migration to Enterprise Hosted, FamilyLink.com also selected one of our support packages that will enable them to work with the OpenX Support Team for any and all questions related to their OpenX implementation. So, in very short order, FamilyLink.com fulfilled all of their ad serving needs!

According to Jonathan Carroll, FamilyLink.com’s ad operations manager, “we originally selected OpenX for our ad serving because we were looking for a platform that provided the means for us to hyper-target our audience, guaranteed server up time and provided accounts for the advertisers and publishers on our AdMazing network to log in to and review up-to-date statistics. Switching to Hosted has been truly liberating since our advertising is now completely hosted on OpenX’s infrastructure, allowing us to focus exclusively on our relationships with our publishers, advertisers and the millions of folks who rely on FamilyLink.com to connect with their family members. In addition to the comprehensive ad serving platform and functionality we’ve come to expect from OpenX, the service and support that their team provides is timely, responsive and, not least, friendly!”

If you’d like to join FamilyLink.com and experience all of the benefits that OpenX Enterprise Hosted customers enjoy, please click here.

And, if you’re interested in having your website featured in an upcoming OpenX Customer Spotlight, please let us know.

I am going to be in Amsterdam on Thursday, March 26 with Erik Geurts, and we are hoping to spend time with members of the OpenX community who are nearby. Read more about it here:

• Erik’s Blog
• Facebook
• Upcoming.org
• LinkedIn

Please come if you are in the area. I look forward to seeing you there!

Last week, we released the public beta for Advertising Manager for Wordpress. It is a new application which allows Wordpress users to easily manage their ads inside the Wordpress admin console, without the need for consistently modifying HTML, or managing a separate application, when you need to change your ads.

The Advertising Manager for Wordpress project page has documentation and more information.

Feature suggestions, bug, and other feedback can be written in the Wordpress forums.

Download it now!