Hi Arlen,

Thanks for the info. It sounds like an interesting project. A couple of questions spring to my mind:

* How does it fit in with the MMA guidelines?
* And how does the XML-RPC invocation tag deal with device detection, or where in the process is the client device considered?

Hi Ruadhan,

Thanks for the questions, I'm sure they are ones many people will wonder

First, OpenX is a free/open-source adserver which provides a means for organising, prioritising and delivering banners - so the actual content of the banners is up to the user and/or networks being used. So, my basic answer on MMA guidelines is 'It gives you the control, so use it wisely'. OpenX is normally used by web publishers/advertisers, however it is quite extendable and we are often asked about using it for mobile devices and hope to provide features which help out mobile developers + publishers.

For device detection, there isn't currently anything natively built-in to say 'use banner Z on device Y' -- however there are delivery limitations which can limit banners to be used for only certain user-agent strings. You can use a regex for such limitations - so basically you could create a 'Channel' for different user-agent matches, and link banners to whichever channels are appropriate. So it is possible just without a straight-forward UI aimed at mobile devices built in.
This would be something good for a developer to build with the API and provide their users :-)

In the next major release (will go beta soon) we will launch a plugin system which allows for a preAdSelect hook which could be used to direct requests to particular zones based on mobile device type.

Cheers,
Arlen

Hi Arlen,
We are using OpenX for serving Ads on our website, SMS. We want to use for Wap (Mobile Web) as well. You mentioned about "plugin system which allows for a preAdSelect hook which could be used to direct requests to particular zones based on mobile device type". We need that soon. Can you please let us know about that?

Hi,

The plugin system will be in version 2.8 of OpenX. Currently it is in development stages and is going through testing by a select group of users. In the next few months, its too early to give an estimated date, it will be released as 2.7-beta for public testing and bug fixing (no new development).

If you would like a chance for earlier testing please let me know -- this also gives you the chance to provide useful feedback and help shape the system. You'll also have plugins created for when the release goes beta or stable.

Cheers,
Arlen

Arlen:

The definition of Zone based on size is not a good concept for mobile, or at least as far as I can figure it out. I've been looking at OpenX and trying to make it work, and that's what keeps breaking me.

Conceptually in OpenX, Zones are a section of my page, be it a footer, side panel, etc. Banners are assigned to zones. On my mobile page, I want to put an ad in my header, so that will be Zone: Header. (header and footer pretty much are the only relevant ones in mobile)

However, the banner that I need can vary in size. The banner can be one of four sizes (as defined by the MMA) depending on the mobile phone screen. I really want to be able to request a banner for Zone:Header at a certain size, but since Zone effectively equals size I cannot.

The OpenX concept of Zone being a section of my web pages breaks. In mobile, a section of my web page will vary in width, because my screen size varies in width and the browser will not be the one doing the resizing of the banner, it is the server that makes that choice.

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