How To Use OpenX – Part 1

OpenX is my weapon of choice when it comes to serving ads. Although it is by far the best free application in its genre, it can be quite confusing to get around at first.

But before we go any further, let me explain a few basic concepts about ad serving.

As for any ad serving technology, there are two types of users: advertisers and publishers. The advertisers creates and manage campaigns in which he will add banners or text ads. On the other hand the publisher will define zones to which he will link banners.

The thing is that for most OpenX users, they will act as both the advertiser and publisher at the same time. If you want to display Google AdSense or Yahoo Search Marketing ads on your website, I highly doubt that Google or Yahoo will take the time to log in your ad server and add banners to their inventory. Instead you will retrieve banner codes from your Google AdSense account and add it to your advertising inventory.

So now you’re ready to header over your OpenX ad server and log into the administrative interface.

Adding An Advertiser & Creating A Campaign

Once logged in OpenX, click on the Inventory tab at the top. The first you log in, there will be a Default Advertiser. Click on the Delete link next to it to delete it.

For this example, we’ll add some Google AdSense ads our inventory. Click on Add new advertiser so you can add Google to your advertiser list. You don’t have fill all the fields. And since you’re not really giving access to Google, you don’t have to specify a username and password.

Click on Next when you’re done.

You should be now prompted to enter the information for this advertiser’s first campaign. Enter “AdSense” as the campaign name, leave all other parameters to their default value and hit Next.

Don’t select anything yet under the Linked Zones tab. Click on the Banner Overview tab and then on Add new banner.

Now go retrieve your AdSense unit code from your Google AdSense account. For this tutorial, I’ll use the classic 468×60 format.

Back in OpenX, select the HTML banner type. A textarea will appear for you to copy-paste your AdSense code into. You don’t have to provide a destination URL since this is handled by the AdSense code. Enter the ad dimension and a description.

Click on Save changes when you’re done.

So now you’ve just added a new advertiser, created a campaign and added a banner to your inventory.

Stay tuned as I’ll post how to add publishers and zones and how to display ads on your website.

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