 Joomla! core member Peter Russell has been on a sabbatical of sorts and during this time he's been looking at a range of open source projects. Today, Pete talks with OpenX founder and CTO, Scott Switzer. Scott, 38, drives the product vision and is the OpenX community leader. Scott works at OpenX's London office or out of a suitcase—he travels a lot. University trained (Vermont), he has been a software architect for large software systems such as for GEHealthcare. He was formerly the co-founder/CTO for other media companies, like M3 and article 27.
Pete Q. Scott,please explain the journey that has seen you involved in Open Source?
Scott A. As the co-founder of article 27, we spent lots of time thinking how to break into a software market with established players. At the time, I advocated an open source model, but we could not build a supporting business model. That decision, and subsequent exit of the company, provided the challenge for me to build a business plan which would support open source software for my next company. We decided on a services model with M3 MediaServices, now part of Unanimis Consulting. We built upon OpenX software (which was open source), and released a hosted service based upon the software.
Q. How do you reconcile Open Source and the commercial path OpenX is taking?
A. When starting OpenX we decided to not charge for software or services, but instead charge advertisers a percentage if we connect them with one of our publishers. Because OpenXcharges advertisers, our publishers seem to be fine with this as long as OpenX continues to maximise the value that their inventory is worth.
Q. How many developers do you have on board and where are they based?
A. We have around 15 full-time developers based in Europe (London, Poland, Italy), and other community developers based around the world.
Q. What does OpenX do for publishers and why would they want to use it opposed to just AdSense?
A. Publishers like to use OpenX to deliver advertising from ad networks like AdSense. This way, they have technology which gives them independent statistics on how their campaigns are performing as well as the ability to control numerous advertisers and ad networks simultaneously so that the maximum revenue can be achieved.
Q. Will OpenX (as an ad serving solution) always be free?
A. Yes. OpenX will always be open source, and will always be free.
Q. Google seems set to release something that manages ads in the OpenX space, what makes OpenX a better, more flexible choice than sticking with the big 'G'?
A. I wrote a blog entry on this one, but to summarise, OpenX gives a publisher transparency in data, control over which advertisers and ad networks see Web site users, and the ability to customise the ad server to suit specific needs.
Q. Can you provide us with some examples of publisher sites that are using OpenX in a big way?
A. Publishers of all sizes and from over 100 countries use OpenX, some well known global brands are Tech Crunch, AOL's Userplane, and Sun Microsystems.
Q. You have kindly offered to assist Joomla! with its ad network. Why? And are there resources for other open source projects to benefit from such a collaboration?
A. It is very easy to work with a fellow open source project. Both Joomla! and OpenX have the same types of users (Web site publishers), who will surely benefit from each of our products' functionality.
Regarding OpenX helping Joomla! monetise its site—we have lots of people with many years experience in optimising sites. We intend to use the Joomla! site as a case study, and write about best practices in making money from advertising.
Hopefully, other open source projects will see the benefit in this kind of collaboration. It will make our respective products more compatible and easier to use in the future.
Q. OpenX is working on a Joomla! module. Wanna tell us more about this? If you don't, is the cat out of the bag? :)
A. There have been a couple of efforts to create an OpenX module for Joomla. They have been non-starters, because we built them in such a way that would be difficult to upgrade when new versions of either OpenX or Joomla! came out. Now that we have an ad server API for OpenX, as well as a hosted version, an OpenX module for Joomla! is possible.
We are releasing an alpha version of the OpenX module for Joomla! today, for both a hosted version and a download version of OpenX. Over the next few months, we are going to work with the Joomla! community to improve on this module. (Note: The alpha release is a private release. The public release is likely to be at beta.).
Q. How do you see OpenX and Joomla! as a publishing platform—features/benefits?
A. The real benefit is that a publisher has total control over how the site looks and performs, what features that site provides to its users, etc. As Joomla and OpenX deepen their relationship, tighter integration can occur, so that the publisher can optimise BOTH the content and advertising on their site for an even greater revenue per user/page view.
Q. OpenX is highly customisable. Can you give some examples of this power in action?
A. [Three:]
1. Alternative delivery. A widget provider (Nabbr) is using OpenX to deliver widgets across their publishers. A video provider (Castfire) is using OpenX to deliver podcasts with ads directly integrated inside of them.
2. Huge scalability. Userplane has modified OpenX to deliver up to 1 billion ads per day.
3. Content integration. Associated Content has integrated OpenX inside their custom content management system
Q. The OpenX brand looks great. Can you explain why the change from Openads, etc.?
A. As we built a company behind our open source ad server, we needed to consider a number of things besides "is this name available on Sourceforge?" For example, since OpenX is in over 100 countries around the world, trademark concerns become important. Also, since we have plans to build a marketplace around the ad server, we wanted a name which can grow in the future (so we don't need to change our name again!)
Q. I've heard that OpenX is moving more into a 'hosted' solutions space. Why? What are the benefits for users?
A. The major benefit of providing a hosted service is to allow publishers to start serving ads on their site without the need to host their own infrastructure. There are lots of publishers who do not have any space on an ISP—they just sign up to Wordpress or blogger.com and start writing content. We want to make sure that OpenX grows with this trend as well.
Q. Is OpenX likely to become seen as an innovator, blending commerce with open source?
A. The OpenX model is definitely new in the open source space. We decided not to have services as our core business, which is different than most other open source companies. While services are important and we plan to provide them to our customers in the future, our core revenue will be coming from providing value to the community of publishers which use our technology (in the form of providing ads to Web sites).
Q. Do you think more companies will be watching your adventure and seek to learn from your lead?
A. I think so. Over the past 5 years, the software industry has completely changed, and there are entire industries which behave differently because of open source. The CMS world is a great example. It is amazing to see applications like Vignette and Broadvision, which were billion dollar companies, completely erased because of Joomla!, Drupal, and Wordpress.
The advertising space is similar. Four years ago, publishers would pay more than $1 per 1000 ads for ad serving technology. Today, if a publisher pays for technology, it is around $0.05 or less per 1000 ads. I would like to think we had a hand in driving prices down for publishers.
Q. Where do you think OpenX will be in two years time?
A. OpenX will still be focusing on the same things we do now—providing a transparent customisable solution for Web sites to control their advertising. In two years time, I hope that OpenX will make the advertising marketplace more efficient, and that these efficiency gains will mean more revenue to our publishers.
Thank you Scott.
Help OpenX Refine its Joomla! Module
OpenX is looking for a select group of users to test the alpha version and influence future development of the OpenX module. If you currently use both OpenX and Joomla! and are happy to spend a couple of hours at OpenX's London office, they'd love to hear from you! Please contact
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