OpenX Ad Server v2.8.5 has been released for download, but I don't recommend upgrading (yet).

Without any form of publicity, OpenX.org have released version 2.8.5 of the OpenX Ad Server. There are a few strange things about this release, which makes me hesitant about recommending an upgrade.

• First of all, I wonder what the official status of this release is, since it hasn’t been formally announced like all previous releases. At the time of this writing, it’s been offered on the site for at least 10 days.
• Secondly, if you look at the OpenX Developer site, this version isn’t marked as ‘completed’, symbolized by the wrapper about the package icon of all previous versions.
• Thirdly, looking at all of the issues that are listed for version 2.8.5, a few of them still show a status of ‘unresolved’.
• And finally, work is already under way for the development of version 2.8.6, which must mean that version 2.8.5 has a few known bugs that require fixing.

Since it’s been so quiet about the release of version 2.8.5, I haven’t really had time yet to give it a good test drive. For the time being, it is my recommendation to stay with version 2.8.3.

The first webinar will be held on Wednesday, March 3rd, from 10 to 11 AM Pacific time. This webinar is aimed at new and beginning users of the OpenX Ad Server, with subjects like:

• How to organize your inventory
• How to traffic a campaign
• How the ad server selects a banner
• How an ad is delivered

I think this is a great initiative and a wonderful opportunity to gain some insight from the people who created the software.

You can read more about the webinar series on the OpenX blog and sign up for this first webinar. There is a limited number of seats available, and places will be assigned on a first-come-first-served basis.

More information can be found in the blog post announcing this new release of the plugin.

OpenX Ad Server v2.8.4 released for download

The OpenX Blog and an e-mail newsletter to all registered users have been announcing the newest installment of the OpenX Ad Server software, version 2.8.4 for the last 6 days. Yesterday, the new version has finally been released for download.

I have been able to test this new version in recent weeks, and I can report that the installation and upgrade procedures have been changed significantly. One very important change is that anyone installing or upgrading is forced to create an OpenX account. This used to be optional. In my opinion, this will put off a lot of users from upgrading or from even starting to use the software. The software is still free of charge, but users now pay a price by having to give up their privacy.

Update January 31: A bug has been found in OpenX version 2.8.4, affecting the display of statistics for banners. It appears to be mostly a cosmetic problem, the statistics are in the database but not showing up correctly in the OpenX statistics screen. Information can be found on the OpenX Developer Site.

OpenX Ad Server version 2.8.4 announced

On Friday, January 22, as one of the last things before the start of the weekend, OpenX.org announced the upcoming release of version 2.8.4 of the OpenX Ad Server. According to the blog post, the free service OpenX Community Hosted has already been upgraded, and the new version will be available for download ‘later in the week’ (which is a bit odd, because at the time of posting the week was effectively over).

More focus on OpenX Market

The announcement on the blog focuses primarily on the many changes and new features for using the OpenX Market. That’s not surprising, because OpenX Market is the main source of revenue for the company. Making it easier for more OpenX publishers to participate in this market was a move that was to be expected.

Bug fixes and improvements

The blog post doesn’t mention it, but this new release also fixes dozens of bugs and long standing issues. The Issue Tracker on the OpenX Developer site lists a total of 144 issues. A little bit surprising, perhaps, is that only 115 of these have been labeled as ‘fixed’.

Version 2.8.4 includes the security fix that was rushed out just before Christmas with the emergency release of version 2.8.3, and it also contains the fix for the serious under delivery problem for contract campaigns. Both of these fixes were contributed by independent consultant and developer Matteo Beccati.

Reviews to follow

Since the downloadable version of OpenX Ad Server v2.8.4 is not yet available, I haven’t been able to test drive it yet. I do have the OpenX Community Hosted account, and I can see the new features for working with OpenX Market in there.

I’m planning on writing some follow up blog posts as soon as possible, for instances about the new upgrade procedure (which is said to have a mandatory registration step), the new OpenX Market features and other noteworthy issues.

Your feedback, please!

What would you like to know about this new release? What should I be researching and writing about? Drop a comment below or contact me with your views!

You can submit my OpenX support request form if you’d like to discuss working with me on your OpenX project.

This plugin was designed primarily for use by publishers operating one or more websites. It enables them to help their clients to deliver their advertising campaigns to visitors who are most likely to be interested in the products or services being promoted. This is done by capturing and storing data about the visitor’s surfing behavior and search behavior, or demographic data. When creating an advertising campaign, the ads can be targeted to this known data about the visitor.

Information about this OpenX plugin, including an explanation of the concepts of behavioral targeting and retargeting, can be found at the AdServerPlugins.com website.

Display Statistics as Graphs using a free plugin for OpenX

The team at AdserverPlugins.com have released an update of their free “Statistics as Graphs” plugin. This version 1.0.0 release is available for download right now at their website.

The new version now displays graphs for almost all statistics: advertisers, campaigns, banners, web sites, zones and global history. Graphs are now available for all user types (administrators, managers, advertisers, website owners). Every graph has buttons to navigate to the previous and next month, or to go up a level to show the current year’s statistics. Clicking a bar will drill down into the underlying statistics, down to a day graph with an hourly break down.

The graphs are now displayed using the open source product “Open Flash Chart 2“, providing more flexibility and charting options than the Google Visualisation API that was used for the first beta release.

An emergency fix has been developed and released as OpenX Ad Server v2.8.3. The new version is available for immediate download at the OpenX website. The OpenX Blog provides background information and tips for security precautions.

This problem was so serious for me and my clients that I was forced to take action. People had reported the issue in various places, but as far as I could tell no action had been taken at OpenX.org. I decided to hire Matteo Beccati, a former OpenX Senior Developer who is now working as an independent OpenX consultant. With his background and experience, he was able to quickly analyze the issue, and develop and test a fix for this bug.

The problem originates from a small but crucial mistake in the hourly maintenance process. At the top of every hour, the OpenX software recalculates the number of campaign impressions it needs to deliver for the next hour. The program code retrieves and uses the delivery statistics for the current hour, which (by definition) are not yet available. As Matteo described it in is bug report:

Impression allocation for contract campaigns seems to be constant for every hour, regardless of the traffic patterns. That’s a problem for most of the sites that have a bell shaped delivery and can’t reach the hourly target during the night. Those “lost” impressions will only be reallocated on the long run leading to overall under delivery.

Having found the cause of the problem, Matteo was able to develop a fix for it. We have been testing the adjusted code for a while now and I’m happy to be able to report that affected campaigns have started to perform as expected.

We decided to publicly release the fix so the OpenX community can benefit from it. The bug report and patch are available now in the OpenX issue tracker. Please note that this fix has been developed and tested on OpenX version 2.8.2 only. Applying patches to software should be done by qualified programmers only. As usual, make backups of any file you are about to change.

The issue has been labeled ‘critical’ by the OpenX development team. Hopefully this means the fix will be included in the upcoming version 2.8.3 of OpenX Ad Server.

I want to thank my client PSH Media Sales in The Netherlands for enabling us to use their campaign delivery statistics for analysis and for allowing us to test the fix on their installation. And I want to thank Matteo Beccati for devoting some of his precious time to this job. We would appreciate your feedback on this patch.

Update January 23, 2010: this fix is included in the upcoming release of OpenX Ad Server version 2.8.4, making it available to thousands of users that aren’t comfortable with applying patches to their software.

In recent months, a number of people contacted me about OpenX Hosted (which has recently been renamed to OpenX Community Hosted). They all seem to be experiencing the same problem: using the OpenX Hosted user interface, for instance to add campaigns or to view statistics, is impossible because of technical problems. The system is either extremely slow or it doesn’t work at all, displaying an error message instead. I haven’t had any direct reports from people about the actual delivery of ads. However, the absence of evidence is not the same as the evidence as absence.

User base continues to grow

When OpenX Hosted was introduced as  a free hosted ad server back in October 2008, people could display a maximum of 25 million ad impressions per month without paying a cent. In early February 2009, OpenX announced that they had already signed up more than 5,000 users, and at the same time the free package was raised to a maximum of 100 million ad impressions per month.

The number of users must have continued to grow since then, unfortunately I don’t have any recent numbers. I’m sure that most users don’t get even close to the maximum of 100 million impressions, but all users together must cause a substantial load on the servers running OpenX Hosted.

On problem days, the issues seem to begin at about 9 AM Eastern when people start working, and last until  about 6 PM Pacific when the last US office workers go home. This is another indication that it is most likely a system capacity issue.

OpenX status page

OpenX Systems Performance Page

A few months ago, after a number of incidents causing down time, OpenX introduced a page that displays their system status. It is called ‘OpenX System Performance‘. According to the explanation on the page, it is updated daily and it should display the current status of a number of components of the OpenX systems, including OpenX Community Hosted, OpenX Market, the main OpenX.org website and the user forums.

However, I’m not sure if this page displays the system status completely accurately. I’ve personally seen a number of cases where the OpenX Hosted user interface was having big problems, but the status page happily displayed the ‘Operating normally’ icon.

Looking for more information

Although OpenX.org has been remarkably silent about these continuing problems, people do voice their concerns about these performance problems on the OpenX forums.

I would love to hear about experiences from other users. Have you been having problems accessing the system? Has ad delivery been affected for you? Please consider leaving a comment below or contact me directly.