OpenX vs. WideOrbit vs. YuMe

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.

I think for the purpose of our business, WideOrbit is one of the better systems I have worked on. No system is every perfect, but WideOrbit seems to be a lot better than the system we've worked on in the past. The fact that it is able to integrate other third-party systems into it is also very helpful. We have recently moved to a new avail system for our sales executives, and the fact that they can easily transfer avails and schedules into the order system in WideOrbit is very helpful.

Incentivized

Ask advertisers what they would like to see offered from publishers that they aren't currently seeing in the space. Also, ask advertisers what their current challenges are or what they have noticed their clients pushing for recently

• 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)

• Wide Orbit offers a wide variety of reports, as a user- you are able to maximize these to your advantage and include as much or as little information as necessary for internal use or for your clients.
• It's fantastic to be able to reference all of our orders in one place and track completion process from order entry to approvals and actual air time/run dates
• Very user friendly and efficient to use.
• The Revenue Reports are especially wonderful, and can be sorted according to whatever perimeters you desire.

Incentivized

• The industry is constantly moving towards cross-device targeting and some advertisers are lagging behind in this regard. Many do not offer the ability to target on Connected TVs, which YuMe does. This is appealing for some of our clients that are more open to testing the latest technologies.
• YuMe's sales staff are all very knowledgeable about their products, but not too pushy when it comes to getting on the plan. They try to add value to the meetings not by just pitching their products, but by educating us on industry trends and latest technologies.

• 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.

• Would love to see the inventory codes in the drop-down menu stick like breaks and weeks..and not have to re-select each time for a report
• would like to have better functionality when exporting to XL or to PDF. Formatting could use improvement with output
• offer a monthly calendar of training opportunities like Nielsen offers

Incentivized

• It would be interesting to see YuMe to provide ad solutions that are aimed to drive in-store traffic. Many videos are often geared towards engagement or the % of video completes, but it'd be helpful to see more ad formats that are able to track in-store sales outside of having the ability to print out a coupon.

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.

YuMe's service was strong. They were able to regularly provide reporting and analytics. Whenever we reached out to make optimizations, the YuMe account management team was very responsive and would provide follow ups in a timely and professional manner. YuMe was also able to provide competitive rates and deliver all the inventory that was agreed upon on the IO. Many publishers that under deliver often get cut from the plan the next time around. This was not the case for YuMe

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.

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.

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

I would say that WideOrbit is much better than Pilat in terms of its ease of use. One major factor was that WideOrbits customer support is stateside and easily reachable if help is needed. Pilat was located in Europe I believe and getting assistance was very hard. As far as just the overall day to day usage, WideOrbit is leaps and bounds better in the area of functionality

Incentivized

YuMe is considered a leader in the video advertising space. YuMe had a very large array video ad formats that made it very flexible to run with them even though the creative and assets would change from campaign to campaign. YuMe also has a very strong portfolio of clients that have worked with them in the past. We have also requested to see the site list and there are many premium publishers that fit well with our target audience

• 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.

• The system doesn't seem to work well with any of our digital platforms. For example, we can input an order and track an approval process through our finance system and see the invoice, but actual execution of any digital assets are NOT done through Wide Orbit

Incentivized

• YuMe has driven a higher number of video views and video completions so that the overall campaign has strong performance metrics. YuMe also provides a great deal of reach and scale for campaigns due to its ability to offer more competitive and cost effective rates