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November 11, 2019
OpenX is used by the Campaign Management team on many of our branding campaigns. We work with them programmatically via an OpenRtb integration in order to get to more users in the US. We have seen CPMs on the exchange a bit high, but the quality and performance we got from the users make it worthwhile.
- A lot of data points to optimize sent on the bid request.
- Good coverage on desktop and mobile app.
- Very good reporting filters on the platform.
- The Support team is a bit slow to respond.
- The platform is not very reliable.
- Prices on the exchange are a bit high compared to the competition.
OpenX is being used by the supply team in our organization. We are connected to them via OpenRTB and use them among many other exchanges to increase our reach and inventory on app campaigns. We use them for worldwide campaigns although their main focus is on the US and Canada and we have not found good results in any other geos.
- Their reporting API is very complete
- A lot of video inventory
- Good customer service
- Not a lot of inventory outside North America.
- Prices are a bit high across the platform.
- We have found discrepancies on how impressions are counted on their platfrom and our systems.
We are using OpenX as an exchange that is connected to our DSP of choice. What we are seeing is that they are good in terms of volume, but not very good technically with product questions or in customer support (long response times, generally understaffed on their end). It is used by the programmatic arm of our organization and they generally complain about the fraud that is going on in the exchange.
- Lots of volume and cheap.
- Strong in geos that are hard to reach, specifically APAC.
- Some premium publishers that are only on their exchange.
- Bad customer support. Account managers change every 3-4 months.
- A lot of fraudulent activity on the exchange. Not enough anti-fraud filters.
- Some technical issues with clearing impressions have happened with them.
My department uses OpenX to generate reports for clients. These reports essentially detail how their advertisements performed for our eNewsletter deployments. We report on the sent, opens, clicks, CTR, open rates, etc., and OpenX is great for customizing these reports for the specific client.
- Customizes reports
- Gives detailed and accurate information
- Is simple to use
- Could provide full reporting information
February 22, 2014
I was building a website from scratch for a very large medical content company that wanted to rotate a range of ads in a range of areas on the site for the wide number of products that they were selling. The Open X Ad Server worked like a dream. I was able to keep track of all of the inventory, serve it up on the correct pages, and repurpose the ads. I was also able to track which were working best and show them more often, and pull the ads that were unperforming, tweak them, and get them back up. There was a bit of a learning curve involved when I first started, but no more so than other products I have used, and I found the customer service was very supportive if I did have specific issues.
- Ease of use
- Flexibility
- Good interface
- Good customer service
- User manual
- A quick get start manual online would help
February 21, 2014
At Mail.com Media Corporation (currently Penske Media Corporation http://www.pmc.com ) OpenX was used to power the Mail.com portal page which served millions of unique users per day and more than half a billion ads per month. The Mail.com portal page delivered unique content and was the focal point in which users would pass as they logged into their webmail each day. OpenX was chosen to supplement then reduce the reliance of third party ad networks which were already serving this strategic space in the Mail.com network. OpenX allowed Mail.com to reduce the dependency and heavy costs associated with third party ad networks. In addition to being less dependent on third party ad networks and reducing costs, OpenX helped empower the ad sales and ad operations teams by giving them more control of their own network inventory. OpenX also served ads network wide in each brand and line of business in the Mail.com portfolio.
- 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)
- Although I do believe that OpenX was designed to scale, many of the platform's target users are running single server implementations which probably led to the silly choice of MyISAM as the default database storage engine for the MySQL tables. In multi-server setups or any installation with a significant amount of load these should be altered and optimized for InnoDB. The default storage may have changed since my last roll out of this platform but I do remember the tables needing altering before putting any significant amount of load on them.
- In a multi-server setup sometimes problems can arise from the statistics collector and processor on the front end delivery nodes that process the ad impression data and aggregate the resulting statistics back to the master database resulting in several scenarios in which the master database can be out of sync with information collected on the delivery nodes and manual intervention is needed. However, most of these problems can be monitored and engineered for.
- The focus of OpenX on enterprise customers serving hundreds of millions of ads as opposed to the long tail of smaller publishers who simply can't afford to utilize the enterprise hosted solution and must utilize the OnRamp solution which has suffered from performance problems and might not be a viable option for many medium sized publishers
February 28, 2014
Used OpenX to manage all online advertising for a local newspaper. This was being used to manage 100% of the online advertising for the organization.
- Managing ads through ad networks like Google was very easy. It was very easy to manage the ad network ads alongside of our own ads.
- No answer
February 21, 2014
OpenX not only made our media buying more efficient, we were able to increase both impressions and ROI to expand our branding while generating a return, which isn't easy to do.
- Programmatic buying
- Puts media dollars to a more efficient use
- Allows for transparency in placements
- Better product differentiation
- Connection to more ad management tools
February 19, 2014
OpenX was used to serve banner ads within free-to-play Facebook and Mobile games that had millions of daily users. This was a bit of a custom implementation, and a bit of ahead of the times for the industry in 2010. Where we acted differently was to use OpenX to serve our own internal 'house ads' in addition to external paid advertisements. We used these banner spaces, set up as separate OpenX zones, to do everything from cross-promoting our own internal games to providing information and instructions to players. Many times, players had no idea they were looking at information served up by an ad platform, but OpenX and the flexibility of modules available to us let us select and target our players with a CRM approach that was later admired by the much larger company that bought us.
- It's inexpensive to license, or at least it was. We basically paid nothing to use OpenX up-front, so it was easy to convince the powers that be to let us invest some time into the software.
- It's flexible, allowing creative teams to do more than simply sell ad impressions or clicks. We used it to pop-up informational and fun content to specific subsets of players.
- OpenX was sometimes tricky to use and didn't feel like a well-polished product. That is exacerbated when you're using custom modules to make the software do things it wasn't intended to.
- Gaining access to OpenX data and instrumentation was a chore, making reporting a manual process that was time consuming.
We used OpenX in a educational platform, to show ads to engage the user with similar content and to do A/B testing for registration styles.
- A/B testing was particularly good, having the ability to configure probabilities and other settings.
- Analytics was well detailed.
- Integration and implementation were simple and easy to customize.
- User interface is not so straightforward.
- Documentation was not as complete as it could be.
March 07, 2014
We brought OpenX on as an ad server because another portion of our company was using them as a publisher platform. We were able to get a significant discount by utilizing OpenX. We used it across my department in order to run ad campaigns.
- Good customer service
- Good tech support
- Thorough
- Integration process was long & arduous
- Had attribution issues initially
- Could not properly integrate piggyback pixels
February 22, 2014
While our core business is very concentrated, our parent company has a network of resources for a very unique ad network. We utilize OpenX to serve advertisement(s) across multiple sites. All of our ads are house-ads and is not open to the public; it's solely to promote our products, initiatives and support a plethora of partnerships. It easily allows a small team to manage advertisements throughout the network with ease.
- OpenX easily allows us to manage our network and inventory.
- Enterprise support staff is very helpful; training is accessible.
- They are local to Los Angeles.
- Reporting registers relatively quickly.
- 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.
It is a viable ad serving solution for our internal membership based properties. Allows for customized targeting and on the fly changes with ease.
- Micro targeting
- Ease of trafficking ads
- Ease of trafficking placements
- More robust reporting features
- Creation of users with specific permissions
- Delay in reporting
Used by certain departments for trafficking or reporting purposes and addresses the needs especially for smaller businesses.
- Tool quickly identifies how to link zones
- Able to create placements quickly
- Easy to use the UI
- UI makes sense but needs a revamp
- Have to drill down into placements, creatives, etc
Open X is being used in the form of buying the inventory through our DSP partners in a RTB dynamic CPM buy. Anyone managing campaigns would have experience with Open X inventory and buying from the exchange.
- When it comes to RTB and spending on the open exchange market, the number one reason why we spend in one exchange over another is simple performance
- When Open X doesn't perform which it tends not to, we have to shut that exchange off. This exchange tends to not perform at a CPA or CPC KPI and tends to not have the safest sites either.
- Because I only use Open X as an exchange which I tap into from a DSP I can't speak to it's other capabilities.
- Get better publishers, have more transparency.
OpenX Scorecard Summary
Feature Scorecard Summary
What is OpenX?
OpenX is an ad serving platform. It is sold option as a hosted solution for can be purchased as an installed application. It allows for easy inventory management , geo-targeting of ads by country, and provides statistics for each ad placement.
Categories: Ad Serving & Retargeting
OpenX Competitors
OpenX Technical Details
| Operating Systems: | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application: | No |