OpenX (which used to be called Openads), provider of an open-source ad serving solution for web publishers - we use it at TechCrunch -, is growing like weed under the leadership of former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller, who is the company’s chairman, and ex-Yahoo executive Tim Cadogan who is CEO. According to the company, they’re serving well over 300 billion ad impressions through its software as of this month, while its Hosted product line has achieved a more than 1 billion monthly ad impression run rate.
In August 2008, OpenX announced the launch of version 2.6, an update to its downloadable ad server and introduced a couple of features which spurred usage of the system, including a new API, dashboard and a speedier ad tagging system.
The ad serving solution is getting attention from around the world: its products are used in more than 100 countries and are translated into twenty-five languages by community contributors. The company says its community now counts over 35,000 total publishers that power more than 150,000 websites across the Internet.
OpenX, which is published under GPL, makes money by providing professional services to its publishers, something it started offering only two months ago. In addition, it sells premium support packages and enterprise-level Hosted accounts. A fourth revenue stream currently being tested is OpenX Market, a monetization platform that will essentially be something of an online market place where advertisers and publishers can partner up with each other.
OpenX raised around $20.5 million in funding from Accel Partners, Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Mangrove Capital Partners and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. It was originally based in the UK, but has now moved its main headquarters to California with offices in London and Poland.
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I don’t get it. How come they even exist? There are so many ad servers out there, where, ofcourse, DoubleClick’s DART is the biggest one.
Maybe someone could share some light about this?
It’s so popular because it’s free and you can install it on your server … doh .
Maybe you could share a link of your website with us so that we can see it run on your site please.
That be great thanks.
@Dan, probably because it offers a greater degree of flexibility…
That’s like asking ‘how come Firefox exists, when there is something like Internet Explorer, which is the biggest one’.
Dude get a grip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jGqx3sqq-4
Yeah,
But so does Google Ad Manager. And it is backed by Google.
And there are so many other flavours out there. Granted not all free, but there are OAS, DART (yes, again), zedo etc.
Great for them. Love to hear these growth/success stories in the recessionary times for so many other industries.
We are using this product across a few of our properties and yes…works great.
We were surprised that it worked so well out of the box (hosted version) considering so many of these types of things don’t. I didn’t know about the funding and what sounds like superb leadership for this company.
I used it when it was called “OpenAds”.
One of the best (if not THE best) free tools in the niche.
I had no idea that so big names are working on it until I read it here…
Me too! And when they changed the name to OpenX all my work and services stopped. I know the services are free, but if you want to effectively integrate into your site you’ll probably need some help designers and programmers which aren’t free.
It’s so popular simply because it is free. Doubleclick is very very expensive which makes it useless for smaller publishers and google ad manager is not actually that flexible (yet). The problem with openX is that whilst it’s about the only free solution that works, it doesn’t actually work very well. You always need to keep a close eye on your campaigns to make sure they’re serving correctly and the interface is simply awful (and has barely changed since the days of phpads). I’d jump to another product in an instant if there was something else out there…
I see what you mean.
How expensive are those other solution, including DART anyway? Is it that expensive that the publishers prefer this?
I mean it sounds like there is a good market out there (long tail).
Bruce, OpenX interface is awful compared to what? Certainly if you compare it to Google Ad Manager, but it beats Doubleclick’s interface with a hand tied to its back.
I mean, Doubleclick doesn’t even allow firefox users and is a royal pain to get things done there or to consult any stats.
Hello Julio,
I work on DART (DFA) and as far as i know they will soon be available on firefox too. This is what they have told me..
Does also anyone know how does OPENX cooperate with doubleclick’s code?
Suppose that i have a client that uses OPENX for ad serving and i want to give him doubleclicks javascript code in order to have metrics for a campaign of mine.
Does anyone know how the code should be implemented in OPENX in order to have proper countings?
Finally does anyone know if the statistics that OPENX touch reality or not?
Bruce -
Let us know if you need any help. Also note that OpenX Hosted, and the forthcoming v2.7 open source release, have a new interface which hopefully makes our product even easier to use.
Cheers,
Scott Switzer
OpenX Community Leader
Dude,
If u r looking for a better interface, try Trafficspaces.
In addition to being free, OpenAds has two big things going for it: it is open source and so totally modular and customizable; and it is NOT controlled by Google or MSFT, each of whom have their own media business strategies. I know alot of publishers who put alot of stock in both.
In case you are wondering, I am NOT an investor, though wish I was…
Just last week, I made a choice to go with OpenX over Google AdManager. And now am getting OpenX Hosted up and running on my small niche sites. It is a perfect solution for a publisher like me. And I found OpenX to have a more intuitive and flexible UI than AdManager. I demoed both in depth and OpenX was much easier to understand, implement, and manage.
How can they measure impressions from the self-serve solution? The 300 billion monthly impressions must be quite the estimate.
OpenX really rocks
I agree, it rocks! And besides that, I think it’s very important that the Internet competitive landscape stays healthy and there are competitors besides Google, so PLEASE… DO USE OPENX (and others) opposed to G AdManager & Doubleclick
OpenX is a great platform because it is free, not because it rivals any other paid ad server.
I don’t see how there revenue model is going to work out in the long run. I hardly see how they can be profitable from pro services and one day setting up an ad exchange. Most buyers and agencies won’t have interest in spending to much budget (if any) on a platform where the publishers are going to use an ad server like OpenX that doesn’t report accurately and that doesn’t take in third party tagging easily. The reason why they have pro services is because implementing the software by yourself is typically difficult and time consuming.
Bottom line, it gets the job done. it is good for managing ad networks and direct sales to smaller companies, but it will never make sense if you are (or plan to be) a real company with a real sales team.
There is also ADTECHus.com, now owned by AOL, which is make big gains against DoubleClick (DART) in the US.
With many different ad servers out there, it took us some time to find the right one. OpenX is free but with no or little support. To get support, you better pay their professional consultants some decent rates.
I’m now using AdSpeed (http://www.adspeed.com) and can strongly recommend it. The pricing is excellent for its many features and friendly support.
Growing like weed? Hahahaha. I think you meant “like a weed”?
I am glad to see this company succeeding, they’ve put so much work in over the years and really took a chance with the revenue model they were promoting. My hat is off to them.
We use OpenX as our ad server. It is a great product and the fact it is an open source helps us to manipulate it and adjust it to our needs by accessing the code and changing it.
1 improvement that I wish to have is in the chaining feature. Right now it is on zone level and it is very hard to see the whole chain. If only I could manage the chain in 1 place, that could have made life much easier. (like in AdvertPro)
Anyway, Thank you very much for this great product.
Udi Oz -
There are a number of people interested in pushing forward the existing OpenX chaining functionality. You can see this and other plug-in ideas here:
https://developer.openx.org/wiki/display/COMM/Plugins
Please contact OpenX if you want to be a part of the community that builds this feature.
Cheers, Scott
i found it to be very complex and reverted back to the paid for service http://www.adbutler.com which is much user friendly. obviously if they could simplify its functionality then i would go for it…
It is very slow, it slows my website, so i deactivated all my ads, but they still showed up. After that I deleted “the advertizer” hoping that it will stop serving ads, but after 2 hours I can see that they still deliver the ads on my site.
I cannot delete the code from my site, because the other person can get to the code, but this is too slow for my website, i am not happy trying it for a week. Its not woth my time.
Does this work on a mac using Safari?
I’m hoping this isn’t like DART, which can only be used on IE.