OpenX Blog

Hosted Version of Openads!

Tags: OpenX
by Scott Switzer on January 16th, 2008

Today we announced a version of our ad server that is hosted. What this means is that a publisher will have the option to use Openads without downloading and installing on their own web server. This will be useful for small publishers, who do not have the time, money, or expertise to use the downloaded version. Equally, large publishers may prefer a hosted version of Openads if they do not want to configure a server cluster that will handle large amounts of traffic.

Obviously this is a gigantic effort - there are more websites using Openads than all other ad servers combined. If even a small percentage of our community chooses a hosted version rather than a downloaded version, we will be serving billions of ads per day. The planning involved with this has been in the works for months.

What does this mean for publishers?

  • Choice. Publishers will now be able to choose between a downloaded and hosted version of our ad server. Openads will continue to provide a download version of our ad server.
  • Open. Openads will continue to be open source, licensed under the GPL.
  • Free. Both the downloaded and hosted version of Openads will be FREE.

We are starting to roll out our hosted product at the end of January. During the first couple of months, the service will be in private beta, and we will be opening the beta to more and more publishers throughout 2008. If you would like to sign up for the private beta process, please sign up here.

Please realise that it will take some time for us to roll out the beta across our entire community. I encourage you to continue to download and install Openads - we will keep you up to date and invite you to join in with beta testing as soon as we are able.

I cannot emphasise enough how much I appreciate our team’s effort in preparing for a hosted version. I also thank everyone in the Openads community for using Openads, and for continuing to give us feedback so we can make our products better.

Thanks,
Scott

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Related articles:
Openads announces $15.5M funding and a free hosted ad server

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29 Comments »

  1. Hello,

    Thanks Scott for the response on the other post today. I guess one question would be how Openads will eventually handle large scale publishers and what will happen if there is a major spike I traffic. I think people would be concerned about how reliable the servers will be on Openads end and what type of support will be available. This is not to say that you all are not capable (I think Openads is great!), but what is going to happen when servers on your end go down and people lose thousands of dollars of advertising?

    Thanks,

    Marcos

    Comment by Marcos — January 16, 2008 @ 4:10 pm

  2. Hi Marcos,

    Well - this is a great question. We are building a robust, fault tolerant infrastructure in different data centers around the world. This is the reason why we are taking our time, so that the level of service for such a large scale effort is high.

    Our goal is to minimise any chance of an outage as much as possible. Of course, the chances cannot be reduced to zero - even Akamai, with thousands of replicated servers around the world, have had some well publicised outages.

    We will not go into public beta until we have the technical and service infrastructure in order to provide solid service, so if there is an outage, we will have the capacity to fix as quickly as possible.

    Spikes in a single publisher’s traffic will not cause more than a blip in our infrastructure, because we will be hosting thousands of publishers. If there is a more general surge (e.g. major news event), we are using major CDN’s to ensure smooth service.

    Scott

    Comment by Scott Switzer — January 16, 2008 @ 5:07 pm

  3. Hello Scott,

    Thanks for the reply and addressing my (as well as many others concerns). The project sounds exciting and looks like OA is heading in a great direction. I can’t wait to finish my site so I can apply for the beta!

    Marcos

    Comment by Marcos — January 16, 2008 @ 5:38 pm

  4. [...] Hosted OpenAds looks really cool. [...]

    Pingback by Quick Hits | Venture Chronicles — January 17, 2008 @ 3:55 am

  5. [...] recent posts and now they are getting more money to really develop their vision further. With their announcement of a hosted service I think they might be further along to bringing real change to the advertising market in general, [...]

    Pingback by OpenAds getting $15.5 Million and other Ad Stuff at Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts — January 17, 2008 @ 7:49 am

  6. [...] Hosted Version Posted By: James  Published in Affiliate Marketing, News 17Jan Yesterday OpenAds announced that at the end of January they will start rolling out a hosted version of their great [...]

    Pingback by » Openads announces Hosted Version James Seligman: The Ups & Downs of Administrating Forums & Affiliate Marketing — January 17, 2008 @ 11:38 am

  7. Hi,
    Interesting project.
    I’d like to know how feasible it would be to migrate an adserver solutions which has been customised using ‘phpAdsNew’ … to the hosted solution.
    Our developers have suggested that “Unfortunately due to the major changes we have made to your particular installation, it is not possible to migrate your data to an OpenAds system. We could however start again with OpenAds make changes to that system, and go from there. This will have some substantial costs associated with it though.”
    Any thoughts would be appreciated.

    Comment by Darren Smith — January 17, 2008 @ 11:41 am

  8. Darren,

    Thanks for the message. It is a challenge to migrate from a previous version of Openads (or phpAdsNew) to a new version, if the core code has been changed.

    We are internally building out our plugin API (and have already implemented a Web Service API) so that there is much less need to change core code. In this model, changes would be implemented as plugins, so that upgrades can happen much easier.

    If you or your developers want to contact us for further information or advice, please do.

    Cheers,
    Scott

    Comment by Scott Switzer — January 17, 2008 @ 3:58 pm

  9. [...] blog di Openads riporta inoltre che l’azienda ha appena annunciato la disponibilità di una Hosted [...]

    Pingback by Online Advertising: Openads incamera 15,5 milioni di dollari e lancia una Hosted Solution | Stalkk.ed — January 17, 2008 @ 4:23 pm

  10. [...] Valueclick, Casale, you name it. For publishers without IT departments Openads just launched a hosted version, and for more technologically-invested sites there is an open source server software, free to run [...]

    Pingback by Openads aggregates ad inventory, provides cost-effective Publisher solution — January 18, 2008 @ 2:00 am

  11. I’m missing something here. How are you going to pay for this long term? Free is great, but what about when the 15.5 million runs out and your bandwidth bills are due?

    Will you got to a pay service, serve your own ads in the mix? Just curious as I’d like to go with a hosted solution, but won’t if I don’t think it’s going to make it. I don’t mind paying.

    Comment by ryan — January 18, 2008 @ 4:53 am

  12. [...] yesterday made a fairly significant announcement that I’m sure will interest many bloggers who are looking for a tool to manage the ads on [...]

    Pingback by Openads announce free hosted ad server — January 18, 2008 @ 7:26 am

  13. [...] Openads vă pune la dispoziţie un adserver gratuit [...]

    Pingback by Openads vă pune la dispoziţie un adserver gratuit » mnz's blog — January 18, 2008 @ 8:59 am

  14. [...] over at ProBlogger points to an announcement by free ad managing software, Openads, formerly known as PhpAdsNew. It seems that they’ve [...]

    Pingback by BloggerTalks » Blog Archive » Openads to offer hosted ads — January 18, 2008 @ 1:55 pm

  15. [...] como OpenAds para administrar la publicidad en tu blog. Gracias a Problogger me entero que OpenAds comenzará a ofrecer hosting de ad server gratuito, que por ahora está en beta [...]

    Pingback by OpenAds Ofrece Servidor de Publicidad Gratis | ProWeblogs — January 18, 2008 @ 2:07 pm

  16. [...] qu’OpenAds annonce aujourd’hui le lancement prochain d’une version hébergée chez eux. Plus besoin de vous soucier de tout cela, vous aurez juste à configurer vos zones et les [...]

    Pingback by OpenAds annonce une version hébergée | Webzer — January 18, 2008 @ 2:34 pm

  17. [...] While it is an open source software and thus free for anyone to install and use, they are now offering a hosted solution. For [...]

    Pingback by Free ad hosting from OpenAds at A Mogul To Be — January 18, 2008 @ 5:15 pm

  18. [...] looking for a tool to manage the ads on your blog? Yesteday Openads made an announcement that I’m sure will interest [...]

    Pingback by 20bmp.com » Blog Archive » Openads announce free hosted ad server — January 18, 2008 @ 5:57 pm

  19. [...] 阅读更多:Openads Blog » Hosted Version of Openads! This entry was written by Riku and posted on 01月 19, 2008 at 12:27 am and filed under 链接. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. « 以前的日志 [...]

    Pingback by 流志 » Openads Blog » Hosted Version of Openads! — January 18, 2008 @ 6:18 pm

  20. Ryan,

    Great question. Openads competes with companies who have a very straightforward model - websites pay them for ad serving.

    We think about things is a different way. Advertisers and ad networks have never been able to reach users of smaller and more niche sites - which make up the majority of Openads users. Our publishers have very valuable inventory - it is just difficult for advertisers to access them.

    We will be releasing a number of products which will bring this vision to life over the next year.

    It will be exciting times for the Openads community!

    Scott

    Comment by Scott Switzer — January 19, 2008 @ 12:35 am

  21. [...] me acabo de enterar que la gente de OpenAds ha decidido lanzar un servicio de alojamiento gratuito para tu servidor de publicidad, con lo cual te evitarás las tareas de instalación y [...]

    Pingback by OpenAds ofrece hosting para tu servidor de publicidad | Punto Geek — January 20, 2008 @ 7:56 pm

  22. [...] yesterday made a fairly significant announcement that I’m sure will interest many bloggers who are looking for a tool to manage the ads on [...]

    Pingback by 7for.biz - Share your experience with the world | Make it real — January 24, 2008 @ 5:35 pm

  23. [...] needed to have access to a server to install Openads, but this month they have started trialing a free hosted Openads service. This is brilliant news for small bloggers who want a way to be able to serve & rotate banner [...]

    Pingback by OpenAds Launch Free Hosted Service For Managing Your Blogs Ads | Connected Internet — January 27, 2008 @ 10:40 am

  24. Smart move folks!! if you get this up and working will be great

    Comment by nevasport — February 15, 2008 @ 3:22 pm

  25. I have been in Network Marketing for about 15 years. I have NEVER seen such a total opportunity where almost everyone who takes a look wants to join. People just see the magic in this program

    check it out by going to..

    Carbon Copy Pro Team

    Comment by lucydance — February 19, 2008 @ 1:40 am

  26. I regret that this may be an ignorant question, but how does OpenX function when its products are free. I ask because I use Openads and appreciate it very much. I have looked on the OpenAds (now OpenX, of course) site before for an option to donate but have never found a way to do so. Albeit, with $15.5 M now in its account, OpenX most likely doesn’t need my pathetic donation, but I would appreciate being able to contribute to the project.

    Comment by Marshall — February 20, 2008 @ 5:36 am

  27. [...] allerdings noch wie und durch wen eine Abrechnung erfolgen kann/wird und ob das System nur für die Hosted-Version von OpenX oder auch für die Community-Version verfügbar sein wird. Den großen Vorteil einer Integration in [...]

    Pingback by The OpenX pre-emptive network | Alinki.com (de) Blog — March 11, 2008 @ 4:58 pm

  28. [...] a disposizione di una ristretta cerchia di editori la versione “hosted” del proprio programma. In breve, ciò significa che gli editori avranno la possibilità di usare OpenX senza necessità di [...]

    Pingback by Stiamo sperimentando l’OpenX hosted beta programme! : Scoprire — May 18, 2008 @ 4:00 pm

  29. Very nice… except that we have not seen any progress during the last 7 months. When will the service launch? We have just received an invitation for the Google Admanager and while I do agree it may sound like putting all your eggs into one basket, it is not a concern of ours as we are looking for a scalable ad serving solution that can keep up with our demands (12 ad positions per page, multiple formats, geo-targetting), …

    It would be good to finally hear of a launch date for the hosted version.
    Godspeed

    ATX

    Comment by ATX — July 9, 2008 @ 2:43 am

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