August 13, 2008
OpenX Announces Major Ad Server Update
Launch of OpenX 2.6 Features New API, Dashboard and Other Enhancements
PASADENA, Calif., August 13, 2008 OpenX Technologies, Inc. (OpenX), the world’s leading independent ad server for web publishers, today announced the launch of version 2.6, a major update to its free, open source software. The release contains dozens of new features, including a new application programming interface (API), a dashboard and a faster ad tag.
“OpenX is committed to providing the tens of thousands of publishers in our community with powerful new ways to control the advertising on their websites, display more relevant ads to their users and maximize their ad revenue,” said Tim Cadogan, chief executive officer, OpenX. “The launch of version 2.6 represents a significant milestone and is the result of even more community involvement than ever before. In particular, the new features will benefit publishers by making it easier to integrate the ad server into their business, serve ads more efficiently and quickly view key statistics about their ad servers.”
“From a newbie’s perspective, it’s been simple to get results quickly with the new OpenX API,” said Ket Majmudar, technical director, Ethical Junction. “Within the hour after becoming familiar with the API, I had already automatically created advertisers and publishers. The API saves me so much time managing the content. We have a separate database for our membership, and now that I can hook that data directly through the API, our administration time is going to be cut down dramatically. I’m also pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to automate repetitive tasks, a big plus in the way we use OpenX. I’ve just created a new zone and added ten campaigns to it, taking me three minutes to write the API script!”
Key Features in OpenX 2.6
API
The new OpenX API makes it easier for publishers to integrate the OpenX ad server into their overall businesses and make it operate optimally with their other business systems, such as customer relationship management or financial systems. For example, with the API, developers can write third party applications that create campaigns, retrieve statistics and control their ad servers. Using the API, publishers can also bulk load objects into the ad server such as large numbers of banners.
Dashboard
One of the most visible changes in 2.6 is a new dashboard, a concept originally suggested by the community. Publishers can see, at a glance, key statistics about their ad servers. Widgets are a key feature of the new dashboard and contain instant information on campaign statistics and overviews, the latest forum posts and the latest news from OpenX. Future releases will build on the dashboard’s initial framework to enable publishers to further customize it to meet their needs by making it possible for them to create and add their own widgets.
Faster Ad Tag
Since, on average, most websites serve at least three ads per webpage, OpenX’s new, faster ad tag is a highly useful feature. The single page call ad tag only makes one request to the ad server for each webpage, even when there is more than one ad to display. The result is faster, more efficient ad serving, reducing the bandwidth between publishers’ websites and ad servers, while also providing a better experience for their users. Publishers can access the option to create a single page call tag in the Ad Tags submenu under Websites.
About OpenX
OpenX is the world’s leading independent ad server for web publishers. Building on the strength of our open source heritage, we offer our vast community of publishers comprehensive, customizable and free to use ad serving technology. The OpenX ad server empowers our community of more than 100,000 websites across the Internet with the ability to take control of their ads and maximize their ad revenue and relevance. The OpenX ad server products are translated into 25 languages, used in more than 100 countries around the world, and serve more than 250 billion ads each month.
OpenX Technologies, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of OpenX Limited, is based in Pasadena,California, with offices in London and Poznan, Poland. OpenX is backed by leading investors including Accel Partners, Index Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. For more information, please visit: https://www.openx.com/
OpenX is a trademark of OpenX Limited.