Small business owners are always looking to take advantage of low cost or no cost options, because often, profit margins are thin. That’s one of the reasons there has been long time interest in Openx, a free open-source ad serving program/service, in it’s various incarnations over the years.
More recently Openx has moved into the spotlight by unveiling an “ad exchange” where web publishers and advertisers can work in an automated way to get ads placed, and so publishers can make money. Almost all those publishers are small businesses.
The other reasons OpenX had moved into the spotlight are 1) ongoing venture capital support, which always catches the attention of the media these days, and 2) the skills and abilities of Openx executives to generate PR, and a buzz. The latter, by the way, is something we might all learn from. The ability to create a buzz, while being a small company, is a huge asset.
Except there’s a problem The buzz is there. The users seem to be there. The promises and the promise is there. However, in the present and near future, the services and products offered may not be of sufficient quality and reliability to support the buzz. If that is the case, and it is my opinion that they are a long way from being reliable, then the question is: Will they become good enough before they become dead?
This is an opportunity to watch a case study unfold, to learn from both the mistakes of Openx, and we hope, the future successes. So we’re going to track this over the next year or two.
The other reason we are doing an extensive series of articles is that, in our view, Openx is ineffective in their support and communication of the people using their services or learning to use them. Most small business people, for example, who might be looking for ad serving software, would probably not know how to find the extensive list of software bugs and problems, because, while they are available, they are not obviously available to non-developers.
Bacal and Associates (that’s us) has certainly lost both time and money trying to get Openx to do what its intended to do, in a situation where intelligent support is almost non-existent. From the questions on their own forums, it’s clear this is happening to others.
We believe in information, so we’re going to offer an alternate forum, so people can find out before they commit, and so they know what challenges they are likely to face.
We’ll start from the beginning, explain what the software is supposed to do, the options, why it ought to be good, and we’ll also talk about how it simply does not do what it should.
Comments invited
