Just saw this morning that Google launched a new Ad management tool called Admanager. It’s definitely an interesting move by Google and it will most probably serve most Webmasters as long as it’s free. So far I haven’t had a chance to test it, but since I worked on a few adservers and Openads in my life, I can tell that OpenX has still a good stand in the business. Here my reasons:
1. OpenX can be modified in any way. It can be used as an ad exchange place, mobile adserver or in any other possible way.
2. OpenX is free, while Google’s admanager is going to charge a commission
4. Privacy issues - Google will drive the majority of most websites organic and paid traffic. At the same time it will pay the webmasters for their traffic (Adsense) and eventually even analyze it (Google Analytics / Google Optimizer). Do we really want to put all eggs in one basket?
5. OpenX is independent from third party advertisers and is open to any Non-Google network.
6. I cannot proof it, but Google will certainly push their Adsense and Doubleclick advertising clients ( quote: “AdSense integration (optional):Consistently deliver the highest-paying ad by enabling AdSense.”:-) )
7. Google’s Admanager won’t allow direct sign on for new advertisers. Openads offers plugins which allow also small webmasters to sell ads directly.
On the negative side I believe OpenX is not very user friendly and the hosted solution is overdue. OpenAds also lacks a clean interface and a more simple version would certainly serve most users.
Overall I wished Openads would use it’s current distribution network and build a stronger community where webmasters could work together and possibly market themselves together (kind of like an exchange marketplace).
It’s not about going against Google, but Openads needs to support and build it’s community to compete with the Google borg.
