If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Here are some of the most popular posts:

Open Ads - Open Source Ad Inventory Management
The Big List of Affiliate Marketing Events
Secret To Get On The First Page Of Google

openads.jpgI downloaded and installed OpenAds yesterday. If you are running any sort of advertising on your website, this is a good tool to consider adding to your arsenal. You know that there’s more good things coming because they recently secured $5 million of funding. Plus, they have about 25,000 publishers using their software so it’s likely that they’re going to be around for a while. I have installed the previous incarnation of OpenAds which existed as phpAdsNew but it looks like the new is now old.

The installation was simple. You just have to make sure that your server has all the required versions of MySQL (4.0.18) and PHP (4.3.11). To check your version of php, create a file using a rext editor with the following line and save it as phpinfo.php:

< ? phpinfo(); ?>

Run the file by typing http://www.yourdomain.com/phpinfo.php and you will see the version of PHP installed on your server.

You can check the MySQL version on your server by going into your control panel and looking at the server information. On some servers, you might see the PHP version there as well.

Anyway, a word of caution. I’m not sure if this is unique only to my case. But I had some trouble during the installation process. When I finished the installation (which is a 5 or 6 step process), I couldn’t log in to the admin area using the username and password I had supplied. I was using FireFox and suspected that sometimes weird things happen with compatibility issues, so I erased the config files and started the installation over again using IE7 and it went through just fine.

Apart from that little hitch, the rest of the installation process was easy (you’re given step by step instructions along the way). There’s also lots of documentation available at the OpenAds website.

Rotate Banners Easily

OpenAds allows you to rotate through an inventory of ads in a given timeframe or you can specify the number of impressions or clickthroughs. This lets you split test different ads and select the best performing ones. It simplifies banner rotation and lets you add creatives from different ad networks into your rotation. For example, you can split test between AzoogleAds and NeverBlue. Often times, different ad networks can have the same CPA offer with different landing pages so that is something that you can split test.

Easy Management of Ads In Your Empire

For those of us that have a large network of sites, this tool makes it easy to manage ad serving across different websites. You just have to place the code once on the site and then you can manage the ads all in one place through a single admin panel. That makes life a whole lot easier.

I wanted to bring OpenAds to your attention in case you haven’t heard of it. I will write more about it in the future as I start to really delve into all the functionality it offers.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Popularity: 8% [?]

Other Posts Of Interest

    Quick Review of What OpenAds Can Do For You

    Over a month ago, I installed OpenAds which is an open source (and free!) ad inventory management tool. This is most useful for split testing your ads. There are basically two categories of folks who can benefit from using it. 1. You're a website publisher selling ads - you can use

    Comb Through Your Website Stats To Learn More About Your Visitors

    At the end of each month, it's a good idea to look through your website stats and find out how your site is doing. Whether you're using Awstats that's installed on most servers or a third party solution, there are many things that you can learn about your visitors and

    Tools

    Here are resources and tools that I've used and recommend. Some are free while others are not. These tools will help you either by automating things or helping you be more efficient in using your time. *essential - these are must have! SEO Tools Link Popularity Check Keyword Ranking Tool Keyword Density Analyzer Google vs.

    The Pareto Principle and Internet Marketing

    Any type of advertising that you do on the Internet can and should be tracked. If you don't track where your traffic comes from and whether it converts, you're basically throwing a bunch of spaghetti on the wall and hoping that some of it will stick! It doesn't matter HOW you

    Google Snaps Up Zenter

    In another effort to enroach into Microsoft's territory, Google announced on their blog today that they are buying Zenter which is a company developing software for online presentations. Watch out, Powerpoint... here comes more competition. First there's Open Office from Sun and now Google Docs will be a more comprehensive office productivity