The session will start with an introduction on OpenX, a tour of the new stable version of the OpenX ad server (currently in beta) and our roadmap. In the afternoon we’re going to go into details based on the topics proposed by participants including scalability and performance. We’ll finish up with a Q&A session with a panel of experts.

If you’re coming you’ll get to meet Simon Bailey, our Senior Product Manager, who will talk you through 2.6 demo, roadmap and plugins. Simon has a comprehensive knowledge of OpenX and future product developments.

Heiko Weber and Tobias Schwarz, active community members and OpenX consultants, will be joining us on stage to discuss scalability and performance. You may know Heiko and Tobias from our German forum and from their work as OpenX consultants.

They say the devil is in the detail so here’s some useful info:

• Location: KonferenzZentrum – Plenum 2,
  Josef-Lammerting-Allee 17-21, 50933 Köln (directions)
• Date: Friday, 04/07/2008
• Time: 10:00-16:00

Please take a moment to register if you are planning on coming.

We hope to see you there!

–
Event resources:

• Registration form
• Directions to the venue and the car park.

FAQ’s on the event

Q: I don’t speak German - can I come?

If you speak English, yes! The format should allow for both English and German speakers to stay fully involved in the discussion.

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.

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

This release (v2.4.7) resolves 23 bugs including improved delivery performance when using companion positioning and fixes to campaign delivery and campaign analysis reporting.

Find out more from the release notes, or download the latest version of OpenX today.

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!

Focus group
We’re looking for feedback for a group web publishers about a project we’re currently working on.

What: OpenX publisher focus group
When: Thursday 12th June, 5:00pm (TBC)
Where: Palo Alto

Please email us if you are able to participate and tell us a little about yourself, your business and how you are using OpenX. We’ll pick publishers on a first come, first serve basis so act quickly!

Dinner and drinks
After the session we’ll be heading out for dinner and drinks and would be pleased to meet up with OpenX community members. This will be a nice chance to meet some members of the OpenX Team as well as other like minded people with an interest in OpenX.

What: OpenX dinner and drinks
When: Thursday 12th June, 7:30pm (TBC)
Where: Palo Alto

Please email us if you’d like to attend and we’ll send you an email confirming details.

kind regards,
The OpenX Team

PS. Please feel free to send this invitation on if you know other web publishers in or around Palo Alto who might be interested in attending.

We got lots of votes for Germany and The Netherlands so Cologne was a logical choice for the event. Now that we know where and when it’s time to work out what… We’d like your help to decide what we cover and at what depth. By contributing to the agenda you will be ensuring the event suits you as much as possible.

Please register and tell us a little about yourself and what you would like us to cover at the event.

Thanks to everyone who voted.

More than 500 OpenX publishers and consultants took the time to tell us about themselves, how they use OpenX, where it works well and where we can improve.

For us, the most exciting result was discovering how satisfied and loyal the OpenX publishers are: 97% of publishers surveyed would recommend OpenX. This means a great deal to us and we intend to work doubly hard to ensure we’re worthy of your loyalty.

These results highlighted the key areas where we need to focus on improving, specifically:

• Usability
• Documentation
• Support

There were also some popular ideas and suggestions for specific deliverables:

• Make OpenX simpler to use
• Offer the hosted ad server to more publishers
• Increase the number of languages OpenX is available in
• Improve reporting
• Provide more plugins
• Make OpenX less resource intensive

Over the coming weeks we will share more survey results with you - both because we think you might be interested in them, and also because we’d like to explore some of the more surprising findings with you. We’ll also go into detail on how we’re going to give the OpenX community what it has asked for.

Once again, thank you to everyone who took time to participate in the OpenX Community Survey.

Erik is a great example of someone who has used an open source support forum to build a business by providing support services. His advice: by being active in a forum you can hone your skills, develop a reputation, build a client base and ultimately become your own boss!

I contacted Erik to find out a little about how and why he’s so active in the OpenX community.

Oliver: Congratulations Erik, that’s more than one post every day for four years! Quite an achievement.

Erik: Thanks Oliver, it’s great to be recognised for this. I’m very proud to be involved in such a great community of passionate, business savvy online advertising professionals.

I hope I can inspire others to follow my example and also start contributing more. There are real career opportunities for those willing to put in the effort, and I know there is a big demand for it!

Oliver: How did you come to find out about OpenX 4 years ago (phpAdsNew at the time)?

Erik: At the time I was making money from online advertising but it was becoming a lot of work to change my sites each time I needed to add or remove a campaign. I don’t recall exactly how, but I discovered phpAdsNew and immediately saw the potential for saving a lot of time.

Oliver: Why did you decide to get involved on the forum?

Erik: I think it was the intellectual challenge mostly, but also the nice feeling it gives me when I’m able to help another user.

I went on the forums to find answers to a few of my own questions as a new user. And I found them by searching, not by posting questions. Then I noticed other people’s questions that I could easily answer because I had read the solution in the manual or had already solved the problem myself. So I started answering those questions.

Oliver: What keeps you going after all these years?

Erik: I still find it rewarding to be able to help others who just started using OpenX to overcome the initial hurdles, and also to help more experienced users who run into specific problems. And I find it very rewarding to discover that others have noticed all the time and energy it took over the years.

By answering all those questions on the forums, I was exposed to many more issues than I would ever have experienced myself. That gave me the ability to ‘practice’. And again, others noticed that I had built a lot of expertise. In 2006 people started contacting me for paid consulting work. Over time, I discovered there is a real market for that expertise and that I could turn that ‘consulting on the side’ into my full time business. I am now a self employed internet consultant doing what I love doing and making a real difference for my clients.

In a broader perspective, having this business has also enabled to turn another dream into a reality. I can now work with many different nationalities and international clients, but from the comfort of my own home office.

My work/life balance has improved hugely this year by doing this. I am more relaxed but also more productive than ever.

Oliver: I’d like to say thanks on behalf of everyone in the OpenX Community. We really appreciate all the time and effort you’ve put in over the years.

Erik: I’d like to say thanks to everyone in the OpenX Community who has helped me out over the years! If you want to know more about my services, just visit my site www.erikgeurts.com.

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.

You can see the latest OpenX twitter updates on the blog sidebar or visit the OpenX Twitter page here: http://twitter.com/openx