OpenX vs. Taboola

What are the best ways to integrate it with salesforce.com? What are the best ways to target our users with this tool? To segment the users? How can I integrate my ads with your adexchange-what sizes are you looking for in terms of banners, skyscrapers and so on. In this way I can plan my in house ad and those for the exchange to be the same size, to avoid duplication of work.

If you want to have your company advertised on news websites across the United States then Taboola is perfect. If you're looking for clicks and impressions but not so much interested in traffic that is highly engaged and converting often then I'd suggest Taboola as an option to run traffic, too. This is the perfect platform for grey-hat offers and similar ideas. I wouldn't suggest it for running ads on your website due to some strict conditions and the fact that it might not necessarily play nice with traffic coming from Facebook.

Incentivized

• OpenX is a system that was designed to scale as is evident in some key design decisions found throughout the platform. The multi-server setup that was chosen at Mail.com allowed for a distributed server architecture which separated the front end web delivery nodes from the backend MySQL Database master which replicated data back to each front end delivery node mysql slave. This eased the ability to horizontally scale as needed due to the ingenious separation of the ad impressions data tables on the delivery nodes which were being collected locally on each ad impression and then processed periodically back to to the master database which replicated the aggregated statistics back to the delivery nodes. The ability to load balance across the front end web delivery nodes, add caching at many different layers, utilize a CDN for the static ad images, implement PHP accelerators, and hit memcached instead of the MySQL master made the OpenX platform a service that was very resilient to failures.
• The ability to optimize the platform is also something that OpenX does very well. This is evident in many of the config key parameters available. In addition to OpenX specific tunable's, optimizations can be made at many different levels in which the system sits. These include hardware and operating system level optimizations, tcp and networking stack optimizations, web server/php-cgi configurations, and database (MySQL InnoDB) tunable's. There are many different optimization knobs that can be tuned to help scale the application for the best performance possible
• The documentation was simple, to the point, and well written which led to an easy initial implementation and roll out of a multi-server setup. The installation and upgrade procedures were straight forward even for the complexities of the multi-server setup. I also found the OpenX team to be accessible and even got a chance to meet some of the team at their Up Close and Personal events at Cal Tech in Pasadena. Core developers were on hand to answer technical questions and also made themselves available to us via email and irq channels.
• The open nature of the OpenX platform allows for flexibility in the choice of web serving platform to use (Apache, nginx, Lighttpd) and also the database management systems (MySQL, PostGreSQL)

• A good value on clicks -- they have visitors for all CPCs!
• Worldwide reach and relatability -- so many providers use Taboola. It's very easy to reach your audience wherever.
• High quality -- their policies ensure that only enjoyable, modest content is provided.

Incentivized

• Propagation could be improved; ad units that need to go live immediately could take up to 45 minutes to propagate.
• Over-complexity can be confusing. There are multiple tiers before assigning ad units per order and it seems unnecessary.
• Real-time reporting or a status dashboard would be great.

• I would like to see an easier way to exclude irrelevant sites that our ads received impressions or clicks on.
• Being able to bid on specific sites only.

Incentivized

I no longer work at the company where I was using OpenX, but if I were then I'd certainly stay aboard. Frankly, there are a lot of sunk costs involved with building all of the infrastructure we had put in place, the system was working very well even if reporting was a hassle, and our team was trained on it. Also, I'm not aware of another product that does everything else we'd need it to.

I was given the system to use as part of setting up a whole new site from scratch in less than 2 months, with a large number of specialty hub pages to run ads on and lots of content I needed to run disease specific ads on. The system was easy for me to learn on the fly in a very compressed time frame. I would have loved more chance to really dig in under the hood to see all that it could do, but given how fast I had to work, I got everything up and running and looking great. And I did it ahead of my launch deadline too. My only reservation might be for people who are not as patient as I am in picking things up, or as hands on. Customer service was great if I needed them, and a quick start guide with the essentials would be ideal for those people.

It was pretty straightforward getting an account set up and having an account rep assigned. Compared to some other platforms Taboola is actually rather intuitive when it comes to navigating the user interface. Pixel implementation was easy and we didn't have any discrepancies tracking conversions. Also the ability to target LALs was very useful and semi-straightforward to upload.

Incentivized

They went above and beyond without ever asking for additional money and we met our launch date and immediately started to meet and even surpass our business goals. Nothing was too much trouble, which really stood out compared to other companies I had and was at that time also working with. Customer service can really make or break any business; if i expect my staff to give good customer service, I expect to get it too, and Open X gave it.

We have a point of contact in Taboola and he has been really great in supporting our campaign. He helped us set up the initial campaign, answered our questions related to the campaign and even agreed when I asked for a lower CPC. Also, while he tried to encourage us to spend more, he never pushed us to the point that it gets annoying.

Incentivized

OpenX is less focused than MoPub and it has a bigger reach as it is not limited to the mobile app. Unlike MoPub that focuses on performance, OpenX comes from the branding world and is pushing into CTV and other areas of the industry more catered to traditional media agencies and not pure ad tech players.

Incentivized

Outbrain doesn't charge a fee for automatic credit card billing. Often Outbrain CPC for the same content is cheaper but not always. The Outbrain UX is not as good as Taboola but recent changes had made them better than they used to be. In Outbrain you can not change images or titles once they are submitted. You also can not clone campaigns which you can do with Taboola

Incentivized

• OpenX made it easy to manage online advertising. At the time I used the product I was the lead developer in charge of implementing the solution but quickly was put into the role of managing the traffic and training other users. It was really easy for a technical user to become a traffic manager. Getting other users trained and up to speed was very efficient.

• Taboola campaigns have had positive effects on top of funnel activities and engagement metrics though the traffic is not always as qualified as one would like. You will need to carefully tailor your campaign to squeeze out the most relevant traffic.