Introducing DashiX – the OpenX Source Dashboard plugin

OpenX Dashboard: An overview of all your active campaigns and a breakdown by typeThis plugin will help you save time every day by showing you a quick overview of the total number of active campaigns, broken down by type (exclusive, contract, remnant). More quick stats overviews will be added in future releases.

But more importantly, by clicking the big number, you will immediately see an overview of all your currently active contract campaigns, with a visual progress indicator. Continue reading to find out more!

Campaign monitor with visual progress indicator

A comprehensive overview of all active contract campaigns with visual progress indicator

A comprehensive overview of all active contract campaigns with visual progress indicator – click to enlarge

Instead of having to go through the list of campaigns of all your advertisers, you see your contract campaigns listed here in a single screen. The campaigns that will end first are at the top, the ones that have some more time remaining are lower in the list.

The campaign name can be click to take you to the properties page directly, should you need to edit the campaign settings. The blue time progress bar shows you what percentage of the duration of the campaign has passed, and the colored line below is a visual progress indicator showing you exactly if a campaign is on schedule (in green), or behind or ahead of schedule (yellow). In severe cases, where the campaign is more than 10% off schedule, the visual progress indicator will turn red, enabling you to take action quickly and precisely.

More about DashiX – the OpenX Source Dashboard.

Alternative for OpenX OnRamp

A week ago, users of OpenX OnRamp were ‘just’ wondering what they should do about the OpenX Market being closed off for them starting February 16, 2013. But then, completely unexpected, and without any warning, a much more urgent problem emerged when OpenX decided to shut down the OpenX OnRamp service on Saturday February 9, leaving their websites with blank ad spots, advertisers with no service and publishers without revenue.

So now that OpenX OnRamp is gone for good, are there any alternatives? Of course there are!

Some publishers have migrated to other ad servers by now. Others have downloaded (zip file) and installed a copy of OpenX Source on their own server and replaced the invocation code on their site(s), perhaps with something smart like Single Page Call. If you did, don’t forget to disable the OpenX Market plugin, since it won’t work any way after today.

Hosting for OpenX Source ad serverHowever, if you want to continue using the ad server system you know and love, but don’t want to spend time and energy on installing and configuring the software, there is another option: OpenX Source hosting. Also read the blog post on this alternative for OpenX OnRamp. This OpenX Source hosting service is not free, like OnRamp was, but it is more affordable than you might think. Just fill out the form and you will receive all the information in your inbox.

OpenX Source REST API

OpenX Source REST API

OpenX Source REST API

I would like to draw your attention to a product, which might turn out to be very useful for OpenX Source professionals and developers.

OpenX Source REST API is a REST based API wrapper for the OpenX Source Ad Server. It provides remote communication for any application with OpenX Source using a REST architecture. All information, documentation, installation instructions and an online order form can be found on the website. A license for the OpenX Source REST API software costs US$ 299.

OpenX Source – Mobile App Development SDK

From the web to the app – linking an OpenX Source ad server to smartphone apps

The world’s favorite open source ad server, OpenX Source, was first developed in 1998. In those days, all we had were websites, and a need to display, measure and manage the ads on these sites. Most people didn’t even have a mobile phone, let alone a smart one. Today, there are actually more people using a smart phone to access the internet than a computer at home or the office. On the small screen, we often use apps in addition to the mobile browser. But almost always, advertising is the source of the revenue that enables web and app publishers to create and distribute their content, information, and features.

If you have an OpenX Source ad server to power the ads on your site, it’s a only logical that you want the use the same infrastructure for your apps. However, this is not a simple as it sounds. App developers would like to have an easy yet powerful way to display the ads in the app, preferably without the need to get a deep understanding of the ad server’s technology and capabilities. In short, they will start looking for a Software Development Kit (SDK) to be used in their development environment. Unfortunately, such an SDK for OpenX Source does not exist. Fortunately, we plan to change that.

I’m considering to initiate a project to develop and publish an OpenX Source – mobile SDK for app development, with the following goals:

  • Simple yet powerful communication between the OpenX Source ad server, and apps on Android, iOS and Windows Phone devices;
  • Compatible with the IAB’s MRAID standard for mobile rich media advertising;
  • The whole inventory served by OpenX Source ad server to monetize your inventory for web and mobile.

The project will most likely also include a plugin for the OpenX Source, to add the required capabilities to the ad server.

I’m keen to find out how big a market there would be for an SDK for OpenX Source, and that’s why I’d like to invite you to submit the form below and let me know about your interest. In return, I will keep you informed about the project, its developments and results.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Please fill out the form below to inform me that you would be interested to learn more about the development of a mobile app development SDK for OpenX Source.

Patching OpenX Source v2.8.9 with v2.8.10 security fixes

In a recent blog post, I wrote about the new OpenX Source version 2.8.10 which has been released for download. I also mentioned that the changes are relatively minor. Completing a full OpenX upgrade procedure is one way to implement the security measures that are contained in version 2.8.10, but if you have sufficient technical skills, it might be an interesting idea to just implement the code changes.

[Read more...]

OpenX Source v2.8.10 released for download

A new version of OpenX is available

Version 2.8.10 of OpenX Source has been released and is available for download immediately. This new release addresses security issues, according to a message that is displayed to OpenX Source system administrators when they log in.

The new version can be retrieved from the OpenX download server: download OpenX Source v2.8.10.

[Read more...]

OpenX Source v2.8.9 released for download

Version 2.8.9 of OpenX Source has been released and is available for download immediately. This new release addresses a serious security vulnerability that has been discovered in version 2.8.8 and all earlier versions of the 2.8 branch. The new release was announced on the OpenX company blog, which also has extra information and a download link.

[Read more...]

What is eCPM and how is it calculated?

The acronym eCPM means ‘effective cost per mille’. It is the outcome of a calculation of the ad revenue generated by a banner or campagne, divided by the number of ad impressions of that banner or campaign expressed in units of 1,000. The ‘M’ for mille in the name comes from the Latin meaning 1,000. The formula to calculate eCPM is not all the complicated, once you realize the components that go into the computation.
[Read more...]

RESTful API module for OpenX Source

After last week’s post mentioning the tutorial articles on the OpenX Source API by Canadian web developers Blackriver, I thought it might be useful to also point out that a developer named Rade Popovic created a RESTful API module for OpenX Source. This is in fact a wrapper around the original API that makes it a lot easier to use the available features if you’re more experienced in using a REST interface. There are functions for working with agencies, users and channels, for advertisers, campaigns and banners, and for websites and zones. This module is offered for just 250 euro, and comes with extensive documentation.

OpenX Source API tutorial

Black River, web development firm in Toronto CanadaThe team at Black River (a web development firm based in Toronto, Canada), are working on an article series about the API in OpenX Source v2.8. As they say in the first article:

Especially when it comes to OpenX API – there is almost nothing out there but a few blog posts and outdated code samples. We would really like to share our experiences (both positive and negative) with OpenX API as we strongly believe that the OpenX platform should remain easy accessible and open to the public.

I strongly agree with this and that’s why I wanted to draw some extra attention to these articles.

Here is a run down of the articles in the series: