Comparing Ad Servers – Any Suggestions?
For a while now I have been running Adphilia and we are only a small site representation company that is slowly growing. We have spent a lot of time trying to source the right Advertising server to meet our needs, but we still haven’t been able to find the right one in my mind. We have toyed with using free ad servers like OpenX or Google, as well as corporate ad servers like Right Media or Doubleclick. This is a post which just outlines what we have found within the company.
Free Ad Servers:
Open X – OpenX is an amazing piece of software that allows medium and large website to control their inventory. It is cost effective because the software is free, however you need to think about the implications advertising will have on your hosting servers, because huge amounts of ad serving can mean very large bandwidth costs. I also find OpenX a little hard to understand when you are first using the serving, plus I’m sure the larger your sites are the more complicated it becomes.
Google Ad Manager – Google Ad manager is a great product but it is built specifically for small publishers. It has a great design and easy to use. The first issue is that you can only use this ad server for small sites, because it is not compatible with any larger ad servers, and you have to put ad code straight into the header of your site. Additionally, I really don’t like the fact that when you deliver your first campaign you have to set it all up the day before it is allowed to be start. Small but bloody annoying.
Corporate Ad Servers:
Zedo – Zedo is very professional company with some great customer service. However, with them we got caught on the first hurdle, cause they were very expensive compared to all the other companies. Possibly, this is due to the great customer service and the results they can bring your sites. However, if you don’t have a great sales team to match what they can offer, there isnt too much point.
DoubleClick – This company just amazes me. Doubleclick seems to be a mish mash of several individual sections of software that has been mashed into one tool. Instead of Trafficking, reporting, billing and account details all in one sections, they seem to have segmented them, thus making it very untidy. However, they are the worlds best ad serving tool and the most used.
Atlas – Atlas, I tried to contact 5 times and they have never even responded to the messages I left. So I didn’t even get past the pricing stage let alone using their service. Typical Microsoft!
After all of these experiments it didn’t really bring me to finding the ad server solution that I was after. Im wanting a piece of software that is easy to understand and us, which doesn’t cost the earth, preferably free and web based. Does anyone know of a solution that I should try?
19 Comments
it is totally new to me that Zedo is expensive…an in terms of contacting Microsoft: I suppose leaving a voicemail at reception in a large company without giving much information of what you are looking for will very unlikely get you a response…
it is totally new to me that Zedo is expensive…an in terms of contacting Microsoft: I suppose leaving a voicemail at reception in a large company that offers a huge product suite for both publishers and advertisers without giving much information of what you are looking for will very unlikely get you a response…try contacting the right department via email
Zedo, has since sent me an email direct and there was a big miscommunication between their company and ours. Since that time I now understand that they are quite afforable. They might even now be the company for my network!
Hi Steven, thanks for taking the time to give your feedback on OpenX and a useful roundup of options and your experiences – quite useful for people!
Some will love the complete control and ability-to-customize which a self-hosted solution provides. Some will not. And for this we have our Hosted version of OpenX
http://www.openx.org/hosted
Cheers,
Arlen Coupland – OpenX
Hey Steven,
Let me know if you already went with a solution because I’m going through this process now. I’m looking to possibly move away from GAM to DFP, Atlas or another solution. I’m near the end of my comparison and would love to know where you netted out.
Thanks
Hello,
Since you’re looking for suggestions for an ad server. AdSpeed is an independent ad server and ad manager. You enter your ads and their targeting criteria into our system. We serve ads, track impressions, clicks, revenue, conversions and report ad statistics in real-time. You can easily manage everything about your ad inventory through our user-friendly interface. AdSpeed combines the latest ad serving technologies with advanced web analytics to maximize your advertising revenue.
You can try the demo for yourself here:
http://www.adspeed.com/
Son Nguyen
AdSpeed
Hello Steven –
Which ad server did you eventually choose to use? I’m looking for an ad server that is fairly open i.e. to allow customization/extensions that I want to build in… – would appreciate any suggestions..
Arun
Hi Pete – same question as the one I posted to Steven since you were in the process as well…
regards,
arun
Hi All,
E-consultancy has published this document “Ad Serving Solutions – A Buyer’s Guide” – January 2006.
Also, I work for a young innovative high-tech company in the adserving sector. Maybe, you can be interested in our solution [ad.agio]. Two leading publishers in the Italian market have been using [ad.agio] for several years. They have switched from DART by Doubleclick and Helios by Adtech to [ad.agio]. I will be happy to email you some more information (info@neodatagroup.com).
Ciao
Sara
i can tell you google ad manager is very buggy. i am not confident with it and the support sucks. total disappointment so i now go back to using my current openads. this is the first disappointing google product i have workded with.
One adserver that wasn’t mentioned in this thread is OpenAdStream. I would rate it along the caliber of DFP in terms of top tier Hosted solutions.
http://www.247realmedia.com/EN-US/us/open-ad-stream.html
DP,
I took your advice, and took a look at the Open Ad Stream site.
Wow. It didn’t tell me anything I needed to know – no features, no screenshot, no price, nothing.
“So much for that!”, I thought.
If they’re not going to put the information I would need to recommend this to a client in a an easy to find place, displayed in an easy to read manner…
… there’s not a chance I’ll even consider investigating any further.
hey frndz ,
i know a company that provides almost end to end solutions for digital adsales. it is Uniken Systems.
they have a product AdApt which takes care of contract management,campaign management, revenue recognition, invoice processing and management. As far as I know the product can integrate with both OpenX and Real Media and it is very cheap as well.
I used OpenX for several years and with great pleasure… But since several months we – and many other publishers – are experiencing some severe problems. The OpenX crews is aware of these problems but they leave them mostly unanswered in their own support forum.
Our problem is we are about to start an adnetwork, we would love to continue working with OpenX but is feels like implementing a time-bomb in our businessmodel since the bugs remain and remain.
Right now i’m doing research on what solution to use, Google solution is to small for us, right now i’m looking at Adbutler.
Wonder if anyone could recommend a server-solution
Hi,
What would you recommend for quite smaller ad agency, serving about 2-3m impressions a month? I’m really struggling to source some solutions. Thanks for help.
Hi folks,
If you’re looking for an alternative, take a look at our ad server BittAds: http://www.bittads.com
It’s completely free up to 25 million views/month, no strings attached, and you can set up an account in a few minutes.
cheers,
Jaap de Heer
Streamtech / BittAds
hi all,
@steven : have you finalised your analysis and made the decision yet ? My company is specialised in the analysis, implementation and operations for digital advertising.
There is clearly a distinction to be made between (nearly) free solutions and corporate solutions, but that is mainly influenced by the publisher’s requirements and/or businessmodel.
If any of you would like some more information in detail, just send me a mail and I’ll be happy to help you further,
kind regards,
Alex
I can’t really understand why you don’t take openads/openx.org. If you face problem with the hosted service just go ahead and host it on your own. what else could you wish for as a free and professional service?
Above all forget about the jerks advertising here their own admanager system – its just pathetic guys. openx is free, has a huge userbase and will continue to the future – what else you want?