OpenX Tips

Did you know that in OpenX 2.8, you can, when Working as the Administrator account, go to Configuration > Global Settings > Banner Logging Settings, and in the Block Banner Logging Settings section, specify a list of IP addresses and user-agents which you do not want to log any statistics from?

If you have a small list of known IP addresses and/or user-agents that are causing invalid spikes in your statistics that you would like to block, then this is the place to do it.

Alternatively, if you are a relatively large publisher, you can use the IAB Spiders & Bots list here.

Have you ever seen this in your OpenX installation?

User-level statistics preferences

You’ll find this in your OpenX 2.8 installation under My Account > Preferences > User Interface Preferences, and here you can change your account’s preferences for which columns you would like to see on the statistics screens, and in which order they appear.

However, for newcomers to OpenX (and even to most experienced OpenX users), it’s perhaps not immediately obvious what all of these columns actually are. So, here’s The Guru’s guide to all of these acronyms…

• ID: The ID of the item being shown in the statistics, such as the advertiser ID, campaign ID, banner ID, website ID, zone ID, etc.

• Requests: Shown as “Req.” on statistics pages. As you would imagine, the number of requests. Will only be populated if requests have been enabled in your OpenX install.

• Impressions: Shown as “Impr.” on statistics pages. Again, pretty obvious — the number of impressions.

• Clicks: You guessed it — the number of clicks.

• Click-Through Ratio: Shown as “CTR” on statistics pages. The number of clicks divided by the number of impressions. If you have 1000 impressions and 5 clicks, your CTR is 5 divided by 1000, or 0.5%.

• Conversions: Shown as “Conv.” on statistics pages. The number of (approved) conversions, otherwise known as “actions” or “acquisitions” from a CTA based campaign.

• Pending Conversions: Shown as “Pend. conv.” on statistics pages. The number of pending (i.e. not yet approved) conversions.

• Impression SR: Shown as “Impr. SR” on statistics pages. The impression based “sales ratio”, being the number of conversions divided by the number of impressions. If you have 1000 impressions, 5 clicks and and 1 conversion, your Impression SR is 1 divided by 1000, or 0.1%.

• Click SR: The click based “sales ratio”, being the number of conversions divided by the number of clicks. If you have 1000 impressions, 5 clicks and 1 conversion, your Click SR is 1 divided by 5, or 20%.

• Basket value: Shown as “BV” on statistics pages. OpenX supports the addition of tracking variables to conversions, and one of these is the “Basket value” type. When set, OpenX considers this value to be the value of the conversion — so, for example, if the user is converting by making a purchase, the value of the purchase can be passed in as a “Basket value” tracking variable, and OpenX will display the sum of all the different conversion sales values in the BV column.

• Number of items: Shown as “Num. Items” on statistics pages. Another tracking variable supported by OpenX conversions is the “Number of items” type, which can be used to track the number of items purchased by a user when a conversion occurs. As with the “Basket value” type, the “Num. Items” column will show the sum of all the different numbers of items purchased in the conversions.

• Revenue: Shown as “Rev.” on statistics pages. The revenue generated by your campaigns. If, for example, you have set up a campaign with a CPM pricing model of $1.50, and you have delivered 500 impressions, then you would expect the revenue for the campaign to be $0.75.

• Revenue CPC: A duplicate of ECPC below.

• ECPM: The effective (revenue) cost per thousand impressions. That is, the effective CPM generated by the campaign, no matter how the revenue was generated. (Revenue could have come from a CPM, CPC or conversion basis.)

• ECPC: The effective (revenue) cost per click. That is, the effective CPC generated by the campaign, no matter how the revenue was generated.

• ECPS: The effective (revenue) cost per sale (conversion). That is, the effective CPA generated by the campaign, no matter how the revenue was generated.

You will also note that there are columns for ERPM (effective revenue per thousand impressions), ERPC (effective revenue per click), ERPS (effective revenue per sale), EIPM (effective income per thousand impressions), EIPC (effective income per click) and EIPS (effective income per sale). However, these were all based on the ability to enter a “cost” for your zones in OpenX, to represent your ad serving costs (either internal, or external, if you use OpenX to manage externally purchased inventory) — but this is no longer possible, so these columns no longer provide you with any additional information to those above, and are therefore no longer worth displaying.

As with banner types, OpenX supports a number of different zone tag types. However, as zone tag types can be disabled in OpenX, it may be that the zone tag type you want to use is not present when you go to create a zone’s tag.

If this is the case, then you may need to enable the zone tag type.

OpenX 2.4

While logged in as the administrator account, go to Settings > Main Settings > Invocation Settings. Here, you will find the Allowed Invocation Types section, where you can select which of the zone tag types are enabled.

OpenX 2.6

While Working as the Administrator account, go to My Account > Global Settings > Banner Delivery Settings. Here, you will find the Allowed Invocation Types section, where you can select which of the zone tag types are enabled.

OpenX 2.8

While Working as the Administrator account, go to Plugins, and select the Details link for the openXInvocationTags plugin and finally, select the Settings link. Here, you will find the list of allowed zone tag types, where you can select which of the zone tag types are enabled.

The allowed zone tag types in OpenX

Today’s tip comes courtesy of Seagull Systems’ Demian Turner, who quite rightly points out:

“During testing you can set the cache timeout value to some low value like 1 second so that effectively the cache doesn’t get used.”

If you’re debugging banner delivery, or you want to test the results of changing settings like banner capping or companion positioning, then reducing the banner cache value can be a great way of seeing your changes “go live” much faster.

Of course, if you’re doing this on a production system, you may affect delivery performance, so make sure you keep an eye on your system performance monitoring tool!

OpenX supports a number of different banner types. However, as banner types can be disabled in OpenX, it may be that the banner type you want to use is not present when you go to create a banner.

If this is the case, then you may need to enable the banner type.

OpenX 2.4

While logged in as the administrator account, go to Settings > Main Settings > Banner Settings. Here, you will find the Allowed Banner Types section, where you can select which of the banner types are enabled.

OpenX 2.6

While Working as the Administrator account, go to My Account > Global Settings > Banner Storage Settings. Here, you will find the Allowed Banner Types section, where you can select which of the banner types are enabled.

OpenX 2.8

While Working as the Administrator account, go to Configuration > Global Settings > Banner Storage Settings. Here, you will find the Allowed Banner Types section, where you can select which of the banner types are enabled.

The Allowed Banner Types in OpenX.