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

OpenX 2.8 – an even better version of this free ad server software

Apr 8, 2009 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) MyTestBox News

The advertising market might have taken a hit these months but that doesn’t stop developers improving the advertising software they built so far.
One of these developers is OpenX and they just launched a new version of their popular AND free ad server software: the version 2.8.

We have reviewed this open source ad server software some time ago (when it was at the version 2.4) and we found it pretty compelling and easy to use (the review is here).

Now, with this new release, OpenX is pushing forward to more features like the new plugin framework which allows you to customize OpenX in any way you want (built your own plugins, use third party plugins or have an OpenX consultant do it for you – just like WordPress).
A new feature OpenX introduced was the OpenX Market Plugin which allows you to flow your inventory directly into OpenX Market to maximize your revenue. This Market is now integrated natively in the ad server software.
eCPM was optimized even more and now you can further maximize your advertising revenue by using an entirely new eCPM-based revenue optimization system for ad serving prioritization across your remnant CPM, CPC and CPA campaigns.
The scalability of the software wasn’t forgotten: raw data storage has been overhauled by a re-architected distributed statistics technology (bucket logging) to provide significantly improved scalability and reduced storage requirements.
The OpenX team didn’t forget also the user interface. They have tweaked again to make it even more easier to use.

To get started download OpenX ad server software or use their ad server free hosted solution (no download required).

Tags: ad management, ad server, advertising, framework, free, manager, open-source, openads, openx, openx market, php, plugin, software

Manage your Woodpress advertising with Advertising Manager plugin from OpenX

Mar 17, 2009 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) Tips and Tricks

OpenX, famous for the free ad server management software, recently launched a WordPress plugin named Advertising Manager. With this plugin you are able to manage the advertising from Google Adsense and other networks.

The plugin allows you to easily place the ads either within your WordPress blog posts, or within your WordPress theme (manage the ad networks ads inside the WordPress admin console, without the need for consistently modifying HTML, or managing a separate application, when you need to change those ads).

The plugin is in public beta phase now and, of course, it’s free (like everything which comes from OpenX).

More on their blog and on the Advertising Manager plugin page.

Tags: ad management, ad server, advertising, manager, open-source, openads, openx, plugin, wordpress

Web developers: OpenX, the ad server software company, wants you!

Sep 29, 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) MyTestBox News

OpenX, the well known open source ad server software company, is looking to hire experienced open source web developers.They have several projects and wants developers with proven experience extending open source content management systems or analytics tools.
One big appeal: the location of the developers doesn’t matter! The work can be done remotely (I don’t know if you will be paid for this so you have to ask).

If you are interested then email to tellme@openx.org (include a summary of your experience and some details of one project you worked on and think it demonstrate experience in extending a CMS or analytics application).

If you know a friend or someone interested you can forward this offer to him/her. More of their blog.

We, at MyTestBox.com, have reviewed OpenX ad server software here. We found it to be a very good choice if you want to “take control of your advertising”.

OpenX is well-funded (21 million dollars to date) and is set to become one of the leaders in ad serving software field.

Tags: ad management, ad server, advertising, analytics tool, cms, hiring, maxmediamanager, mysql, open-source, openads, openx, php, phpads, phpadsnew, software, web developers

The new OpenX 2.6 ready for download! New features added.

Jul 22, 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) MyTestBox News

OpenX ad server is quickly moving fast towards becoming a better product! Not long ago the company behind OpenX ad server solution (free) released the 2.5 version and now they are back with a new release: the 2.6 version.

What brings new this version?

• The long awaited OpenX API – automates common tasks and also allows OpenX to integrate with other systems

The OpenX API is a web service and it provides an interface for other applications to control entities like banners, campaigns, advertisers, websites and zones on your ad server installation.

You can do different things using this API:
- integrate your ad server with an existing sales tool, so that when you book a sale, the campaign details are automatically set up in your OpenX installation, without human intervention. You can also link your billing system to pull down statistics and billing information directly from the ad server on demand

- streamline data entry processes using the API, e.g. creating a simple banner upload web-form to automatically upload banners into the OpenX system

- some users are experimenting with building interfaces into the OpenX API from other languages. They’ve provided helper libraries and example code in PHP and Java (Python and Ruby clients being already in development by community members)

See more details on their step-by-step API tutorial.

 

• Faster ad tag – Deliver ads faster and reduce your server load using the single page call

The new ad tag makes one request to the ad server to fetch all the banners needed for the page.
If your websites include more than one ad on each page, then upgrading to OpenX 2.6 will deliver ads faster and reduce the load on your server! (and who doesn’t like the speed?)

Of course, they’ve put together a tutorial for this too.

 

• User management tools – control users permissions and log all trafficking activity (including fine grained control of individual user permissions and logging of trafficking changes)

This will be of particular interest if you more than one person logs into your ad server:
- website owners, who may let advertisers log to see live statistics, and
- networks and agencies, who may have many people involved in trafficking.

Read more details here.

Besides those listed above some other improvements have been added like user interface enhancements, new ad targeting options and other little stuff which makes the life easier for an advertiser and publisher (as well as for the administrator).

The new release has been also translated into 11 languages by OpenX community (Romanian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, French, German, Simplified Chinese, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish Slovenian..more to come).

You have already the OpenX ad server software installed on your box and wondering how to benefit from all these goodies?
No problem! The company doesn’t leave you in the dark and offers a step by step Upgrade tutorial (whether you have OpenX 2.4, Openads 2.0 or phpAdsNew).

So, if you are prepared to jump to the next level in ad serving with OpenX then download and install the new version OpenX 2.6 now!

Tags: ad management, ad server, mysql, open-source, openx2.6, php, software

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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