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 – 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.

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.

However, 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

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.

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!

With the help of fellow OpenX specialist Matteo Beccati, here is a ‘diff’ file that details all the code changes that need to be made.

The following notes are extremely important:

• This is a ‘diff’ file for the changes from version 2.8.9 to 2.8.10 only. Do NOT use this for older versions! Instead, do a full upgrade.
• This is completely at your own risk. I do not offer any form of support, if you do not know how to implement a ‘diff’ file, do not proceed.

Download: Patching OpenX Source v2.8.9 to v2.8.10.zip Version: 1.0 Updated: September 21, 2012 Size: 25.71 KB

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.

With the help of fellow OpenX consultant Matteo Beccati, I’ve completed a full code comparison of the new version in relation to the previous version 2.8.9. We’ve established that there are only a few files that have actually been altered, and there are no changes in the database other than updating the version number. Since a full upgrade procedure can be a lot of work, especially when there is a large database involved, it may be beneficial for some people with technical expertise to directly apply the security fixes to an existing v2.8.9 installation.

The issue being fixed in this release is known as a “cross site request forgery”. The successful hacks that we have investigated all followed the same pattern:

• A legitimate administrator logged in on their own OpenX Source system, which usually results in displaying the “home” tab (also known as “dashboard”).
• On the home tab, on the right hand side, there is an advertisement from OpenX.org, promoting products and services offered by OpenX such as the OpenX Market, OpenX Enterprise, consulting or support.
• This advertisement is actually being delivered via the hosted version of OpenX Source, called OpenX OnRamp, and in some cases the ad being delivered came with some malicious code. It is not yet known how the hackers managed to get access to OpenX OnRamp enabling them to inject that malicious code in the dashboard ad.
• When this malicious code runs, it will add another administrator user into the users table, and we believe it also reports back to some system operated by the hackers that a successful hack has been executed. Most of the times, the owner of the OpenX Source installation is completely unaware of the hack that has occurred.
• Several days or sometimes even weeks later, the hackers then access the hacked OpenX Source installation directly, in almost all cases to upload altered or new plugins, enabling them to fully control this installation. They also make alterations to existing .htaccess files, giving them full access to directories that should normally be inaccessible for outsiders, and they disable the OpenX Source audit trail, thus making their actions impossible to follow and analyze afterwards.
  They then start to add malware to banners, which will in turn affect and infect the computers used by site visitors with malware, trojans, key loggers or other malicious software.

The best course of action is of course to upgrade to version 2.8.9 of OpenX Source immediately. Should this not be possible for whatever reason, the following precautions should be taken:

• Stop logging in as an administrator user if you are just managing campaigns or looking at statistics.
• Disable the display of the “dashboard” tab.
• Lock down the admin directory of your OpenX installation by adding a .htaccess file that will only allow your own IP address to access the files in that directory.

Calculating eCPM for a CPM campaign

When the campaign has a rate expressed in CPM (cost per mille), there is not a lot that needs to be done. The CPM rate is by definition identical to the eCPM value of that campaign.

Calculating eCPM for a CPC campaign

For campaigns with a CPC rate, the calculation works like this:

• you will need to lookup the number of ad impressions over a given period of time
• you will also need to lookup the number of clicks on these ads over the same period of time
• and finally you will need to know the CPC rate for the campaign

Once you know this input data, the formula is:

• multiply the number of clicks by the CPC rate to come up with total revenue
• divide the number of impressions by 1,000, giving you the number of blocks of 1,000 impressions delivered
• divide the total revenue by the number of blocks of 1,000 impressions to come up with the eCPM value

Let’s use the following fictional numbers for an example:

• a campaign with a CPC pricing was displayed 2 million times in a period of 1 day
• in that same day, the ad server counted 5,000 clicks on the banners of the campaign
• the CPC rate for the campaign was set to US$ 0.50

We can now calculate the eCPM of this campaign with a CPC rate:

• total revenue was 5,000 clicks times $ 0.50 equals $ 2,500
• 2 million impressions equals 2,000 blocks of 1,000 impressions
• the eCPM is $ 2,500 divided by 2,000, equals an eCPM of $ 1.25

In reality, you will probably never see nice round numbers like these, but if you use the formula explained above, it is simple to compute the eCPM value of a CPC campaign for any given time frame.

Calculating eCPM for a CPA campaign

For campaigns with a CPA rate (cost per sale or cost per lead), the formula is rather similar:

• You will need to lookup the number of ad impressions over a given period of time
• you will also need to lookup the number of sales or leads (OpenX calls these ‘conversions’) over the same period of time
• and finally you will need to know the CPA rate for the campaign

Once you know this input data, the formula is:

• multiply the number of conversions by the CPA rate to come up with the total revenue
• divide the number of impressions by 1,000, giving you the number of blocks of 1,000 impressions delivered
• divide the total revenue by the number of blocks of 1,000 impressions to come up with the eCPM value

Let’s use the following fictional numbers as an example:

• a campaign with CPA pricing was displayed 2 million times in a period of 1 day
• in the same day, the ad server measured 100 sales related to the banners that were displayed and clicked
• the CPA rate for the campaign was set to $ 30 per sale

We can now calculate the eCPM of this campaign with a CPA rate:

• total revenue was 100 sales times $ 30 equals $ 3,000
• 2 million impressions equals 2,000 blocks of 1,000 impressions
• the eCPM is $3,000 divided by 2,000, equals an eCPM of $ 1.50

Like in our previous example, it is highly unlikely that there are nice round numbers like this, but the formula is always the same.

OpenX Source will automatically calculate the eCPM for you

Fortunately, you do not have to calculate the eCPM outcomes yourselves. In the statistics screens of your OpenX Source ad server system, you can enable an extra column that will show this value automatically at all times.

Is there a difference between eCPM and eRPM?

The terms eCPM and eRPM mean exactly the same, the only difference is the context they are used for.

When a publishers discusses an advertising campaign with an advertiser, the advertiser thinks of the total amount on the invoice as a cost. Therefore the advertiser will think in terms of eCPM. For the publisher sending the invoice, the same amount is a source of income or revenue. Therefore, the publisher could think in terms of eRPM.

But essentially they are talking about the same numbers. Since sales people usually try to talk the same language as their customers, publisher usually just talk about eCPM when they discuss things with their advertisers, and that’s why everyone in the ad industry started using eCPM as the main term.

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:

• The first article is an introduction to the OpenX Source API, with some background information on why it was developed and how to connect with the API.
• In the second article, the examples are mostly about using the OpenX Source API to work with advertisers (creating, modifying, retrieving statistics).
• The third article explains how the eCPM can be calculated for campaigns with different pricing models (like CPM, CPC and CPA), as an introduction for a later article about managing campaigns via the OpenX Source API.