OpenX Tips

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! [↩]

The OpenX team are looking for users to participate in a usability event for upcoming features for the OpenX Market. If you’re in the LA area, and you’d like to take part, details are on the OpenX forum.

Two days ago, Google announced the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, a system for advertisers to buy inventory from publishers.

It would seem that the product is aimed mainly at large advertisers and advertising networks on one hand, and large publishers on the other. As a result, it would seem that for most OpenX users, this announcement will have little immediate relevance, although the exchange does support smaller advertisers through AdWords and smaller publishers through AdSense, which hopefully means that at the very least, OpenX users will be able to obtain higher levels of income from their AdSense banners.

Ultimately, though, Google’s announcement is welcome news for OpenX users as it seems to confirm that online advertising is slowly moving towards an open exchange market, where smaller publishers will be able to participate in online exchanges, like the OpenX Market, which will allow advertisers to more easily access obtain the most useful inventory for them, which should translate into higher earnings for publishers.

Great news for OpenX users — support for sending any unsold inventory to the OpenX Market, so that it will fill the inventory for you (as opposed to the current competition based system) has just been announced for delivery in (roughly) mid-November 2009. You can see details in the roadmap.

Now all the community needs is for OpenX 2.8.2 to be released!

By now, almost all OpenX ad server users will have heard about the OpenX Market. But many people still seem to be confused about what the OpenX Market is.

Here’s a quote from OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan that helps explain the OpenX Market:

The basic mechanics are pretty simple. When a publisher chooses to pass inventory into the Market, they set a floor price – this is usually the maximum price they can generate themselves. OpenX then runs a real-time auction to see if it can generate a higher-priced ad than the floor price set by the publisher. If the auction results in a higher-paying ad, the publisher runs the ad from the Market and makes more money.

If the auction does not result in a higher-priced ad, the publisher runs their original ad and OpenX takes no fee. Publishers are in complete control of both what inventory they choose to put into OpenX Market and their floor price.

Many publishers seem to think that the OpenX Market is a way of selling their ad inventory. As you can see from the above, it’s not. It’s a way of potentially earning more income from your inventory, by allowing the OpenX Market to “override” your already sold inventory with higher paying banners.

That means you need to keep in mind:

• The OpenX Market may not (and almost certainly will not) be able to fill all of your inventory. You must have, at the very least, one banner in your OpenX system that can be displayed if the OpenX Market cannot find an advertiser who wants to bid more than your configured floor price.
• Some or your site inventory will be worth more than the rest — this is called “premium” inventory. As a result, remember to review your statistics regularly after you start using the OpenX Market, to ensure that your floor price is set appropriately, or you might actually end up making less income.
• You don’t have to use the OpenX Market for all of your campaigns if you don’t want to. For example, you may want to simply not have your premium campaigns participate, and only use the OpenX Market option for your “filler”, or lower paying banners. Alternatively, as Tim says:

[As] publishers have complete control over their participation they can place premium ad inventory into the exchange. They simply protect the premium nature of this inventory by placing higher floor prices on this inventory.

While there have been reports of slowness with banner delivery when using the OpenX Market in the past, overall, it seems like the OpenX Market is a reasonably risk-free way for publishers to boot their advertising revenues, which is welcome news!

Of course, if all this leaves you still wondering how to easily do direct sales of inventory with OpenX, then you’ll be pleased to know that “Self-Service” ad selling has been scheduled for release in late 2009.