OpenX Tips

In an AdExchanger.com article published at the end of last year, Bill Demas outlines his view of where online advertising will be going in 2010. In particular, The Guru thinks that all users of OpenX should take note of the following:

“In another paradigm shift, audience targeting will take on a whole new scope with the continued practice of advertisers buying ‘people’ instead of ‘pages’. These advancements are creating new efficiencies and transforming the way display advertising is bought and managed. They’re also having a bubble up effect upon advertisers, who are demanding improved performance and massive reductions in wasted ad spend. Another unforeseen effect is in the way it is changing the behaviors of media buyers: As one industry luminary put it, the ability to manipulate data and hand-pick your audience is “addicting.” In the near future, having a deep understanding of a target audience will be more important than having a broad reach, and any organization that brings this kind of knowledge to the table – coupled with the ability to execute upon the information – will be the big winners.”

So, if you’re a publisher using OpenX to run ads on your websites, how can you take part in this paradigm shift? How do you sell people to advertisers, instead of just impressions?

One way to do that is to enable the collection of information about people that you serve ads to, in order to enable retargeting. You can read all about how retargeting works — from an advertiser’s point of view — in a recent isocket blog post.

Of course, most OpenX users are not advertisers. So, how can you get involved in retargeting as a publisher?

Well, the team at Ad Server Plugins have just announced their behavioral targeting and retargeting plugin for OpenX! This plugin will let you, as a publisher, capture information about user behavior on your websites, which can then be used later to target advertising directly to specific ‘people’, instead of just to ‘pages’.

If you want to get involved, you can request pricing information from the Ad Server Plugins team via their site.

The team over at Ad Server Plugins have released a new version of the OpenX Statistics as Graphs plugin. If you haven’t yet tried out this plugin, The Guru recommends that you do!

(Please note: If you have elected to resolve the recently announced vulnerability in OpenX 2.8.2 by removing the specified files from your OpenX ad server installation, instead of by upgrading to OpenX 2.8.3, then you will need to upgrade to OpenX 2.8.3 before you can install this plugin — the files removed when following OpenX’s instructions mean that you cannot install any plugins until the upgrade has been performed.)

OpenX have announced a security vulnerability in version 2.8.2 of the OpenX ad server.

If you are running OpenX 2.8.2, you should immediately update to OpenX 2.8.3, or follow the instructions from OpenX, to remove the vulnerable files from your OpenX ad server installation.

Last month, OpenX announced a partnership with Microsoft. But what does this partnership mean for small publishers?

The OpenX blog post announcing the deal says that there are two main parts to the deal:

“First, it will help us enable more online businesses to grow by exposing our advertising technology to more potential customers via the referral arrangement with Microsoft.”

This is good news for OpenX — hopefully, the promotion of the OpenX ad server to Microsoft’s clients will increase the number of large publishers using OpenX, which in turn should mean that OpenX continues to grow. This is important for small publishers, as OpenX needs to succeed as a company if it is to continue to develop the OpenX platform, and continue to release updates to the open source OpenX ad server.

“Second, the Content Ads component of the partnership enables us to make another revenue option easily accessible to OpenX publishers. By integrating Content Ads into the OpenX Market, it will become another buyer competing for your inventory. We will also build a plugin for the ad server that will make it easy to sign up and use Content Ads.”

The second part of the deal actually consists of two parts.

Firstly, Microsoft, through their Content Ads program, will participate in the OpenX Market, as a supplier of advertising/buyer of inventory. This should mean more opportunity for OpenX users to sell their inventory in the OpenX Market, which should mean better income for OpenX publishers.

Secondly, OpenX will be building a plugin for OpenX, to make it easier for publishers to sign up to the Microsoft Content Ads service as publishers¹.

However, the OpenX blog post and press release doesn’t say if Microsoft are already participating in the OpenX Market, or when the plugin for OpenX will be available. So, The Guru wrote to OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan, to try and clear up the situation:

The Guru: Are Microsoft Content Ads already in the OpenX Market? Will Microsoft Content Ads be treated specially in the OpenX Market (e.g. separate reporting)?

Tim Cadogan: Not yet. They won’t be treated specially, they will compete in the same way as everyone else.

The Guru: When is the Content Ads plugin expected to be released?

Tim Cadogan: We’re working together with Microsoft on timing for that. Stay tuned.

So, it sounds like the OpenX/Microsoft deal is a work in progress, and hopefully, we’ll be hearing something from OpenX very soon to announce the start of Microsoft’s participation in the OpenX Market, and the release of the Microsoft Content Ads plugin for OpenX!

1. Assuming they are US-based publishers, of course! [↩]

Great news! Erik Geurts and Matteo Beccati have combined forced, and released a patch for the contract campaign under-delivery bug in the OpenX 2.8.2!

You can find the patch attached to OpenX bug OX-5839.