MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks

OpenX – free open source ad server software solution

Jul 3, 2008 by Mircea GoiacloseAuthor: Mircea Goia Name: Mircea Goia
Email: mtb@mytestbox.com
Site: http://www.mytestbox.com
About: Mircea Goia was born in Romania and imigrated to USA in 2005. He lives in Phoenix, AZ and works as web developer. Aside, he works also on several entrepreneurial Web projects. He shows a keen interest in commercial Web development such as social networks, viral marketing, online video. His artistic hobby is filmmaking with special interest in directing.See Authors Posts (76) Miscellaneous

OpenX is a free open source ad server software developed in the past years by a devoted open source developer community. Their website is www.openx.org . For now, they have the software as downloadable and installable on your server but they are beta-testing a hosted version of it (so you can use it without being necessary to download and install it).

It was started in 1998 by Tobias Ratschiller, the creator of also popular phpMyAdmin (a MySQL database web administration tool). Scott Switzer continued his work building on Tobias’ code. Today he is the co-founder of OpenX Limited, the company behind the ad server software.

OpenX was known as OpenAds, phpAds, phpAdsNew and MaxMediaManager but finally the company settled down for the OpenX name in 2008. The company which is behind OpenX got two rounds of funding: 5.5 Million dollars in 2006 and 15.5 million dollars in 2008 and this means it will have plenty of cash to improve its product and make it top-notch (not that it’s not already).

Over 30,000 publishers and advertisers around the world uses this ad server software platform to maximize their online advertising results. The current version of OpenX is 2.4 with a 2.5 beta version in the works and now they’ve released the 2.6 version (this review is for 2.4 version mainly).

You can download the current version here: www.openx.org/download

OpenX let you choose banners, campaigns and terms that fits you best. It has a sophisticated tracking system which let you gather statistics and optimize the results.
In short, you can take the control of your advertising without having to pay big bucks to big boys.

Here are several benefits you get by using this software (courtesy to their website):

• Delivery and targeting

Deliver ads from multiple advertisers and ad networks
Give priority to higher value ad campaigns
Target advertising to higher value visitors based on location, user data, keywords and more
Increase overall click through rates by limiting how often visitors see a campaign
Integrate with existing customer databases to improve ad targeting

• Inventory management

Manage your total ad space from one intuitive interface
Manage advertising across multiple websites

• Statistics

Track and compare the performance of your ad campaigns
Track the relative performance of different parts of your website(s)
Export data to excel for analysis

• Reporting

Generate campaign-specific performance reports for advertisers
Give advertising clients direct access to ad campaign reporting
Export statistics to excel for custom reporting

• Campaign management

Serve ads from direct advertisers alongside ads from ad networks
Distribute the delivery of ad campaigns evenly over their lifespan
Set ad campaign goals such as start and end dates, as well as performance targets based on clicks, impressions, or conversion

• Conversion tracking

Track clicks through to conversions so you know the true value of your advertising
Run your own affiliate campaigns

• Efficient and scalable

Deliver hundreds of millions of ads each month from a single ad server
Use distributed statistics to scale to serve billions of ads using server farms

• Open Source technology

Used by more than 30,000 publishers in more than 100 countries
Free to download and use
Freedom to modify and extend the software

Requirements
The technology used is open source PHP scripting language and MySQL database.

To install and run this software on you web server you need the following at minimum:
-Any web server with PHP support (that means it can run on Windows web server too)
-PHP 4.3.10 or higher
-MySQL 4.0.18 or higher

But their recommendation is the following:
-Operating System: *nix based system (Linux, Unix, BSD)
-Web Server: Apache or lighttpd
-PHP: PHP 4.3.10 or higher
-PHP accelerator: eAccelerator, PHP_Cache or similar
-Database: MySQL 5 or higher

For more in depth technical specs check their webpage here: www.openx.org/products/specs

With the right system it can serve around 100 million impressions a month on a single server. And if you want go to by the billions then you can choose a server farm to do the job (because the software can scale). For more details see here http://blog.openx.org/10/serving-billions-of-ads-using-openads/

Installation
The installation went fairly smoothly. Not many problems encountered if you have on your server what they ask.

These are the steps to a successful installation:

1) Upload the files to your server

The files of OpenX adserver software have to be uploaded into the root of your website or into a directory (like www.yoursite.com/openx)

For this you might need a FTP program and I recommend you a free and easy one: www.filezilla-project.org (Filezilla)
Put there your site’s address or IP number, username and password and off you go.

After uploading the files you need to setup the write permissions for the directory /var (and the rest of the sub-directories). For this you select the /var directory from the right panel, right-click, then select the File Attributes and then you’ll see the image below. Make sure all the checkboxes are checked (like in the image) then Save it.

Note:
If you are having trouble updating these folder permissions you may need to contact your website administrator or ISP for advice.

2) Setting up the new database

After the permissions are set you need to setup the MySQL database for OpenX (this is you use MySQL – but the procedures for other database are the same) and that means the name of the database, the username and the password.

You have to go to your hosting account control panel and look for MySQL icon or link. Click on that and then you have to create a new database. Then you have to create a new user and a password and associate that with your newly created database.

And there you go! You have now a database, a user and a password (usually you don’t need the address or the IP of the database server – they are set as “localhost” but the configuration may depend on the hosting company).

Now you can start running the installation wizard which OpenX provides.

3) Install it

Start running the installation wizard by going to www.yoursite.com/openx

- You will see the Welcome screen and you can easily follow the steps because there’s a progress bar which will show you those seven steps you have to go.

- From this welcome screen click Continue and jump to the step 1: accepting the Terms of Use.

- Nothing fancy here so we go to the next step (even less fancy): accepting the Privacy Policy.

- Now we are getting to a more fancy place where the System check page kicks in. This page will check if you have all the pre-requisites necessary to run OpenX ad server software. If something fails (like you didn’t setup yet the database – see number 2, or you didn’t setup the permission for /var directories and sub-directories – see number 1, or you don’t have all the PHP requirements in place) then you’ll be getting a warning here and you have to go and fix it otherwise the OpenX software won’t install.

- If all is OK then then Continue to the next page which is the Database setup. Here you enter the details of the database you’ve setup in the Step 2.
The database hostname and port usually you don’t have to change it because it’s autodetected.
The advanced setting again don’t need to be changed but be aware that if you have a high transactional database (many writes and updates in the database) then maybe InoDB database would be better than MyISAM database – both parts of MySQL.

- After hitting Continue your database tables will be setup and you can Continue to the next step.

- Next stept doesn’t need to much configuration (maybe change the language and timezone). Otherwise the defaults works well.

- Now you reach the step where you have to setup your administrator account. This account is used when you want to go and administer OpenX’s backend. This administration section is accessed by going to this URL: www.yoursite.com/www/admin

- If you install OpenX adserver software then it’s better to load the Default setup data (as advised in the next step).

- After this step you have reached the end of the installation. Click Continue and you’ll be entering in the main page of OpenX administration section and start setting up your campaigns.

Congratulations! You’ve made it! At least so far…now it’s time to use the software. And this will take sometime so be patient J.

Always during these steps you have the Help link in the upper right of the window so if you feel stuck then click on that and read.

Also you can read more installation details by going to this page: www.openx.org/docs/2.4/qsg-install and www.openx.org/docs/2.4/adminguide

Installing from Fantastico
Sometime you will find versions of OpenX (called phpAdsnew or phpAds or other names it had previously) in the Fantastico scripts bundle www.netenberg.com/fantastico_scripts.php .
This bundle is offered by many hosting companies and it packs a bunch of well known scripts: blogs, e-commerce, photo galleries, content management systems and others.

Usually, the scripts inside the bundle are very easy to install (just several clicks and you’re done).
If your hosting company is offering Fantastico bundle then use it…the downside is that the scripts inside the bundle are getting updates later than the actual scripts (Fantastico team takes its time to test the upgrades and maybe wait more for the updates to be stable).

Upgrading OpenX

If you upgrade OpenX the read these tutorials and articles:

• Types of install
• Prepare for upgrade
• Install and upgrade wizard
• My strategy for upgrading OpenX (courtesy of Erik Geurts)

Using OpenX

OpenX adserver has a pretty simple interface. Quite intuitive. But is also full of features which you will discover step by step.

To start creating campaigns you need to be logged as Administrator or an Agency (remember? You had to setup an administrator account when you installed OpenX – hopefully, you still remember the login details …otherwise you will spend sometime finding it out…just like me).

You can setup your campaigns from your Admin account but it is better to setup an Agency account.

The Agency account has all the features needed to build campaigns for the clients but it doesn’t interfere with the Admin account (so you, as Admin, can supervise what the agency does there).

This method of working is used when a single installation of OpenX supports more than one organization that manages advertisers and publishers. Agencies cannot share or access each other’s information. All reports, campaigns, zones, etc., are unique to the agency that set them up.

Agency Management can also be used if you have an Advertiser or Publisher who wants to traffic all of their own campaigns and zones. You can set up these entities as an Agency, and they can run OpenX as if it were their own setup.

To setup an Agency go to Settings, then Agency Management (Add New Agency or edit the one you have there).

The Agency details will show up in the emails which your OpenX ad server will send to its advertisers and publishers (like regular reports) so be careful what you put in there.

Another good thing of OpenX is that on whatever page you are you can invoke Help for that page by clicking Help link on the right top of the page (near the Logout link). If you want details about how to use a specific page (Add a new advertiser, for example) you click Help and a new window will open having there the help you need for that specific page from where you requested the help.

I find this feature extremely helpful for the user! I recommend you should use it often, at least until you learn the system well.
The Help section has also some presentation slides which gives you a helpful visual clues on how to do things.

Creating campaigns
Publishers and zones (1st part)

To start creating a publisher account you must be logged in as Administrator or an Agency (the last is recommended).

Go to Publishers & Zones tab and then Add a new publisher link.

Every field there has quite self-explanatory names…but if you are not sure what they measn hit the Help link (top-right) and you’ll get the explanations.

If you want the publisher to have access to their account the fill in the username and password details.
I allowed my publishers to change their settings (the first checkbox), but that was it. That would allow them to change the names, username, password, contact, email, URL.
I didn’t allowed them to do anything else (my publishers are not that tech savvy so I didn’t want to confuse them more by giving tons of options).

After adding a new publisher you have to add zones associated with that publisher (a zone is a place where the banners of different types will be put).

Click on the publisher’s name and voila! You have a new set of tabs, among them the Zones Overview tab. Click on that and then on Add new zone link.

Give a name to the zone and the choose a zone type (there are IAB standard type banners to choose from as well as a custom option.IAB stand for International Advertising Bureau). You’re done. Now you may want to configure that zone by going to Advanced tab.

Now it’s time to link this new created zone with a banner of an advertiser. You need to go now and create an advertiser account (see below).

Advertisers and Campaigns

Continuing from above you have to create an Advertiser account where the advertiser will have a banner which will be linked with the publisher’s selected zone.

To get started (you logged in as Admin or Agency) you need to click on Add a new advertiser (which is pretty straight forward) and then Create a campaign for that advertiser.

Here I also left the advertiser the option to modify its own settings (like username, password, email, name, contact) and that’s it.

You can also give the advertiser a nice bonus by having the campaign result be emailed to them at a specified interval so they aren’t required to come and login to the site to check their account.

When you create a campaign for an advertiser you have to start by uploading a banner for it and add some text for each of the presented options (not all are mandatory).
For this you go to Campaign Overview, then Add new campaign. After adding the new campaign go and click onn its name. Now you have other configuration tabs.

To upload a banner go to Banner Overview and click on Add new banner. You can choose several types of banners:

• Local banner (SQL): that means the banner is stored IN the database (and if you will have lots of banners and traffic this will put the database to the hard test)
• Local Banner (web server): that means the banner is stored in a designated directory on the hard disk and not in the database (only the path to the banner is stored in the database and this is good for the database server)
• External banner: you can store you banner somewhere else on the web and put a link to it here
• HTML banner (see some more explanation on Help)
• Text ad (like the name says: just text)

Fill out the rest of the fields and you are done.
After finishing you jump to the next section: Delivery options
Here you can impose limitations on delivery (including choosing the domain or IP address or other options from the right drop down select).
If you don’t to impose anything then just Save changes and go to the next page which is Linked zones.

Save changes until the end (including in the Advanced section).
Now you have to jump again to Publishers and Zones section to continue with the setup.

Publishers and zones (2nd part)

On Publishers and Zones you have created a zone. Now you have to link that zone to a banner from Advertisers and Campaigns.
Click on Zone Overview and then click on the Linked Banners in the newly created zone.
You can choose there to link the banner to the parent campaign of the advertiser or link to individual banner (which may belong or not to a campaign).

Selet the advertiser you want to be linked to this publisher then select the campaign. Done. Of course, if you don’t understand something then hit Help and you’ll find out.

Now you have to get the code which you will embed in the publisher’s page. For that go to Invocation Code and choose the banner invocation type (Javascript tag is the most used invocation code – for more explanations click on Help).

The generated code is what you will embed on the publisher page. You have also there some configuration of the code. If you change that configuration don’t forget to hit Refresh so the system can generate another invocation code with your settings.

To see a visual how to create an ad campaign check out this presentation: www.openx.org/docs/2.4/qsg-firstcampaign

Or check out these video tutorials:

The software has a spartan graphic interface which means is not fancy, no flash or heavy graphic. But it’s useful and effective. Its job is to deliver and track ads, not to run for a beauty contest. You don’t really need more.

One thing I had to discover the hard way (trial and error) was that they don’t explain very well about the agencies. Nor they say that the reports OpenX sends to the clients are sent from an agency account. Not the admin account (that’s how I actually discovered things about the agencies).

Another thing I’ve discovered in the version 2.4.6 is that they have a bug in the Password Recovery feature. If you try to recover your password you can get this error message (along with a database error):
———————
Fatal error: Class ‘Language_Default’ not found in /home/dir/public_html/openx/lib/max/Admin/PasswordRecovery.php on line 279
———————

I looked on their bug tracking system where this bug was reported…but so far I didn’t find a fix.
So I messed with the code and I came up with the fix below.

I opened “/lib/max/Admin/PasswordRecovery.php” and I looked for “Language_Default” (it’s at the end of the file).

Then I changed that with “Language_Loader” and now the Password Recovery feature worked.

Another thing of OpenX strikes you right away: the abundance of the documentation they’ve built to support this open source ad server software.

It’s not unsual for open source applications not to have a detailed documentation, partly because the lack of resources. And it takes time for the open source community to fill out this gap.

But OpenX solves this with a rich documentation written by their people (when you got 15 million doillars in financing you better produce a good product with good documentation).

Here is a direct link to the documentation: www.openx.org/en/support/documentation

Of course, a support forum is a good complementary help offered to the users from the users. And they have it here: http://forum.openx.org

More information about OpenX community (publishers, developers, consultants) are posted here: www.openx.org/community Nothing stops you to get involved if you feel that you can contribute.

And if you have the money then OpenX development team is open to offer paid support (for big OpenX project that might come in handy): www.openx.org/support/paid-support

Third-party developers came up with OpenX mods to enhance and customize more of the software functionalities. One of the is this: www.openxmods.com

OpenX development team also is developing OpenX plugins for well known web software like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and other. More here: http://blog.openx.org/06/wanted-drupal-andor-wordpress-users-to-test-new-openx-plugins/

If you don’t feel like installing or customizing OpenX by yourself then you always can ask more qualified people to do that. Like these ones: www.openxservices.com or www.softyram.com

OpenX in action (known as OpenAds, phpAds, phpAdsNew)

As I said above OpenX is used by over 30,000 publishers and advertisers in over 100 countries on over 100,000 websites. Compare that with 1500 publishers who are using the Doubleclick ad network (an OpenX competitor).

Below are some websites which is using OpenX to power their advertising needs:
- www.techcrunch.com (well known tech blog)
- www.afrigator.com (Africa’s social media aggregator)
- www.readwriteweb.com (another well known tech blog – it seems they are using the hosted solution from OpenX)
- www.thefashionspot.com
- www.singletrackworld.com
- www.morebusiness.com
- www.bannerbloodhound.com

More users of this software can be found on the OpenX webpage: www.openx.org/community/spotlight

Competition
The advertising space is one of the most competitive area on the internet and thus OpenX faces many challengers.
Starting from Google Ad Manager , Doubleclick (acquired by Google), 24/7 Real Media, ValueClick, Advertising.com, Adbrite, Right Media, Atlas Solutions continuing with many other small solutions providers OpenX has a long battle for survival and thriving ahead of it.

Considering the recent infusion of capital I think they will do just fine. At least for a while…

For who is interested in checking out some other ad server solutions software take a look at the links below:
- http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Ad_Management/index.html (PHP/MySQL solutions)
- http://www.hotscripts.com/ASP/Scripts_and_Components/Ad_Management/index.html (ASP classic solutions)
- http://www.hotscripts.com/ASP.NET/Scripts_and_Controls/Ad_Management/index.html (ASP.NET solutions)
- http://www.hotscripts.com/CGI_and_Perl/Scripts_and_Programs/Ad_Management/index.html (Perl solutions)
- http://www.hotscripts.com/Java/JSP_and_Servlets/Ad_Management/index.html (Java solutions)
- http://www.hotscripts.com/CFML/Scripts_and_Programs/Ad_Management/index.html (ColdFusion solutions)

Here’s a list of the top advertising networks:
- http://www.johnchow.com/other-advertising-networks-besides-google-adsense/ (courtesy of John Chow)
- http://lists.econsultant.com/top-10-advertising-networks.html
- http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2180 (table 4 – Top 25 most trafficked ad networks)

Conclusion

Despite intense competition I think OpenX is well positioned to gain a good market share as an advertising solution (especially when the advertising is done in-house).

You can modify it as you wish, it is scalable and, no less important, your data remains yours (unlike hosted solution provided by Google Ad Manager and others, including OpenX hosted solution).

Plus, you have tons of documentation which helps tremendously when you try to setup this software by yourself.
The forum is not very active (I got some responses in days) but it is growing.

The bottom line that I can recommend this software to any user who wants to setup their ad network or take over their advertising (as it is the slogan of OpenX).

Articles about OpenX
- Google takes on OpenX (Gigaom)
- Advertising the open source way with OpenAds (CNET)
- Scott Switzer, CTO & Founder OpenX (ReadWritetalk)
- OpenX vs. Google Ad Manager (ReadWriteWeb)
- Google Ad manager launches limited beta (Shoemoney)
- OpenAds Funded by Index, Mangrove, First Round, OATV (O’Reilly)

Update
OpenX 2.5 is ready to be downloaded and tested! Download here: www.openx.org/beta/download

See the full list of improvments over the version 2.4: www.openx.org/beta/all-features

New update
OpenX just released the version 2.6! More details here!

Yet another update
OpenX also launched the hosted version of their ad server software (ad serving as a service, pretty much like other big networks offers: Doubleclick, Google Ad Manager). Get hosted OpenX here!

————————————————————————-
Mircea Goia was born in Romania and immigrated to US in 2005.
He lives in Phoenix, AZ and works as web developer. Aside, he works also on several entrepreneurial Web projects and he shows a keen interest in commercial Web development such as social networks, viral marketing and online video.
His artistic hobby is filmmaking with special interest in directing.
————————————————————————-

Sphere: Related Content

Want more web software reviews, news and tips/tricks?
Then make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Tags: ad management, ad server, advertising, maxmediamanager, mysql, open-source, openads, openx, php, phpads, phpadsnew, software

Related posts

• OpenX, Ad Server Software, Version 2.8.2 Released
• The new OpenX 2.6 ready for download! New features added.
• The OpenX plugins (free ad server) for Drupal, Joomla! and Wordpress have arrived!
• OpenX 2.8 – an even better version of this free ad server software
• Web developers: OpenX, the ad server software company, wants you!