We’re excited to launch a new release of OpenX today that makes it even easier to make more money, OpenX 2.8.4. This release is now available for OpenX Community Hosted and we’ll be making it available for download later this week. Both Hosted and Download users will find OpenX 2.8.4 loaded with new features that [...]
We’re excited to launch a new release of OpenX today that makes it even easier to make more money, OpenX 2.8.4. This release is now available for OpenX Community Hosted and we’ll be making it available for download later this week. Both Hosted and Download users will find OpenX 2.8.4 loaded with new features that make it easier to serve ads and maximize revenue right away.
If you’re a download user, you’ll immediately notice a more streamlined Install and Upgrade Wizard. This new wizard reduces the install/upgrade process into five easy steps, making it much easier to get the ad server up and running as quickly as possible.
We’ve also built an Inventory Setup Wizard, available to Hosted and Download users alike, to simplify the process of creating a website and generating ad tags. This wizard is accessible through the left navigation menu under the Inventory tab.
New Ways to Earn More Money from Your Ads
OpenX 2.8.4 also comes with major enhancements to the way it integrates with OpenX Market, giving you new and easier ways to earn more revenue across your site’s ad space. There are now three ways you can make money from OpenX Market:
1. Opting in Existing Campaigns to OpenX Market — Just like in previous versions of OpenX, you can still opt in your existing campaigns to OpenX Market while providing a floor price for each campaign. Since OpenX Market only serves ads when it exceeds your floor price, this is an easy way to augment revenue from your campaigns. To opt in a campaign, select the OpenX Market checkbox for the campaign. Or use the OpenX Market Quickstart screen to opt in multiple campaigns.
2. Creating Campaigns with the OpenX Market Advertiser — You’ll notice a new advertiser in the system called OpenX Market Advertiser. Through this advertiser, you can create campaigns that exclusively serve OpenX Market ads — each ad request will be filled directly by the highest paying ad from OpenX Market. These campaigns are just like contract campaigns: you have control over flight dates, impression goals, and priority. You can even add delivery limitations. This makes it possible to traffic ads from OpenX Market the same way you would traffic your other ads. To get started, just click “Add new campaign” next to the OpenX Market Advertiser.
3. Using OpenX Market as a default ad provider for your zones — In addition to the ability to create OpenX Market campaigns, we’re also introducing a better way to avoid serving blank ads. Each of your zones will now have an option to automatically serve ads from OpenX Market if no other ads are available for the zone. This saves you the frustration of blank ads and ensures you get paid even when you’re unable to fill an ad request from your own campaigns. You can enable this setting on the Zone Properties tab for any zone.
A Better View of Your OpenX Market Stats
OpenX Market stats are now integrated into the stats screens for all of your other ads. This makes viewing stats much easier by allowing you to see your Market stats in the same view as your regular stats. So when you’re looking at stats for advertisers and campaigns, you’ll see OpenX Market Advertiser as one of the advertisers listed. Underneath this advertiser you will see all ads from OpenX Market broken out into three categories.
- Ads from campaigns you opted into OpenX Market. These will appear under OpenX Market – Opted In Campaigns.
- Ads from campaigns you created directly with the OpenX Market Advertiser. These will appear broken out by each OpenX Market Campaign you created.
- Ads served to zones that had no other ads to serve. These will appear under OpenX Market – Zone Default Ads.
For OpenX Enterprise users: you will see these ads further broken out by each advertiser in OpenX Market.
OpenX 2.8.4 also provides OpenX Community Hosted customers with further enhancements for ad prioritization for contract campaigns. When all banner weights in a single contract campaign are set to ‘1′, OpenX Auto Weighting will be enabled and will ensure smooth delivery of the overall campaign instead of each individual ad.
Please check out all these new features for yourself today. If you’re not using OpenX yet, get started right away by signing up for OpenX Community Hosted or contacting sales to get started with OpenX Enterprise.
