This is the first of our ongoing OpenX News and Reports to help small business owners accurately assess the capabilities, both strengths and weaknesses of the Hosted OpenX adserving solution, or the OpenX software that you run on your own server.
Deceptive Blog Post About Average Revenue Increases of 25%
Blog post dated June 24th by James Kung, titled: Publishers are seeing an average revenue increase of 25% on ads served by OpenX Market. If you read the actual article carefully you will see that this title, often cited in the media and on twitter, is misleading and, in fact, incorrect.
From the limited explanation offered, OpenX looked at the average floor price specified by publishers, and then looked at the average revenue publishers received WHEN OpenX market served an ad. This actually has NOTHING whatsoever to do with revenues actually received.
It simply means that if I set my floor price (the price at which I will accept a OpenX ad instead of my own) at 10 cents, that WHEN OpenX Market serves ads, I will, on average, receive 12.25 cents.
OpenX is assuming that what I set as the floor price is what I am receiving from other sources, a comletely unsupported assumption. In fact, we know from forum posts that a number of people are experimenting with the market, and setting really low floor prices since they can’t seem to get any ads.
Those with some basic math and who understand the system will realize that since openx won’t won’t serve any ads below the floor, that the result MUST be that no losses are possible. Only positive values can occur since the system will only show ads when the values are positive.
We should also note that now indication is given of actual values. Are we talking about 10 cent floor prices or 10 dollar floor prices. It matters, don’t you think.
Announced That Publishers Getting Paid For Blank Ads – Oh Really!
On June 22, 2009, Stephanc stated that:
If you are getting blanks returned by the Market you are still getting paid for those impressions.
This is in response to problems with the Market that apparently are resulting in some percentage of bad ads. Some have suggested the percentage is as high as 10%, while others have suggested it’s much lower.
What Openx staff member Stephanc does not disclose is whether the money paid out for blank ads is coming from advertiser pockets, or OpenX is itself eating the cost. If OpenX is paying the publishers, then there is no problem.
However, if OpenX is taking money from advertisers to pay for blank ads, particularly without telling them, then generally, wouldn’t this be defrauding advertisers? We don’t know. One of the problems is that so much of what OpenX does is non-transparent and hidden. We are a potential advertiser on OpenX, and I cannot justify spending marketing dollars with a system where I don’t even know if I’m paying for blank ads.
There is some indication that other bugs may be resulting in ads not being served properly for Market advertisers (for example, when publishers use newsletter ads, which are also apparently broken).
We have more updates coming.
Information in this post is based on latest information available, which obviously can change over time. We attempt to use the best information available, and in the event that we include factual errors, welcome input and comments to correct errors. However, majority of information contained in posts about OpenX are taken from OpenX staff member comments, blog, or other messages.
We invite comments from OpenX.
