OpenX Tips

If you spend any amount of time on the OpenX forums, then you will see quite a few questions asking about how to use the OpenX ad server as a banner rotator. Examples include asking:

I want to display banner 1, then banner 2, then back to banner 1 again. How do I do this?

and:

I need to show ads one after another with certain impressions. For example, there are 3 ads.

It should show ads like this: ad A first, then when ad A finishes its 200 impressions, ad B, and when ad B finishes its 300 impressions, show ad C, when ad C finishes its 500 impressions, go back to ad A again, and keep rotating always.

Here’s the simple truth — the OpenX ad server is not a banner rotator. If all you want to do is to have a specific sequence in which different banners are shown to your website users, then OpenX is not what you are looking for. Indeed, performing banner rotation like this is actually difficult to do with OpenX — if this really is what you want to do, go and find yourself a suitable banner rotator.

Rather than being a simple banner rotator, the OpenX ad server is really an integration of two very useful tools — a banner delivery engine, that allows you to easily put tags into your website to deliver banners, and track that delivery; and also a banner management system, that allows you to setup overall banner campaign targets. The OpenX ad server will then deliver banners as it sees best to try and meet those campaign targets.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you don’t have any control over your banners, and how they are delivered. Indeed, OpenX provides you with far greater control than a simple banner rotator can ever give you. For example, with OpenX you can:

• Ensure that you never display the same banner twice on a page;
• Limit how many times a banner is shown to a user in a customisable time period, to ensure that they don’t see the same banner over and over again; and
• Target banners to users according to all kinds of criteria, such as date, day, and time of day, browser type, section of the website, geographical location, etc.

As you are instructing the OpenX ad server about overall campaign targets, and OpenX is then making decisions about how best to ensure these targets are met, this means that you do not have the “specific sequence” level of control that a banner rotator has. Having said that, though, there are ways that you can emulate certain aspects of simple banner rotators, if you really need to:

• Use an Exclusive Campaign with Delivery Capping applied to ensure that the first few impressions of a user’s visit to your site are always given to a special advertiser; or
• Use Zone Chaining to emulate a specific display sequence of special advertiser’s banners.

So, stop thinking about delivering banners in terms of banner rotation — delivering banners in a given order isn’t really that important. What is important is delivering banners to your website’s users in a way that gives your advertisers value for money. Talk to your advertisers about who they need to reach, and what their overall capaign targets are — and then let OpenX do the rest.