The Geolocation Magic Macros plugin for OpenX, Magic Geo in short, enables you to dynamically insert the name of the geographic location of a visitor into a banner. This can be used in both the HTML code and the destination URL. Using this new feature, you can automatically make a banner adjust its content to the location of a visitor.

Demonstration

The banner below demonstrates this by showing your country name and country code, and the name of the continent, and a link to a Wikipedia article about your country.

The code used in this HTML banner looks like this:
You are currently in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/{geo.country.enc}" title="read about {geo.country} on Wikipedia" target="_blank">{geo.country}, country code {geo.country_code}</a>, which is part of {geo.continent}.


More information and download

We have prepared a product page containing all information, documentation and a link to download this free Geolocation Magic Macros plugin for OpenX.

Your feedback is more than welcome

Please let us know your thoughts, experience and suggestions for this plugin using the comments below this post.

This plugin was designed primarily for use by publishers operating one or more websites, by ad networks and by advertisers. It enables them to deliver advertising campaigns to visitors who are most likely to be interested in the products or services being promoted. This is done by capturing and storing data about the visitor’s surfing behavior and search behavior, or demographic data. When creating an advertising campaign, the ads can be targeted to this known data about the visitor. For more information about the benefits of targeting and retargeting, please see the explanation and examples below.

Availability

The Behavioral Targeting and Retargeting Plugin for OpenX Ad Server is available right now. It is already in use by a network of nine websites as well as two ad networks in The Netherlands, and a digital marketing agency in Germany.

Request information about this plugin

When you are interested in using this OpenX plugin, we invite you to submit the form below. We will then contact you to discuss features, pricing, and licensing terms.

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Additional information

The difference between direct targeting and retargeting

Targeting is a technique used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns. It can be applied directly, matching the ads on a webpage to the content of that page or known demographic information about the visitor. It can also be applied indirectly, using information that was captured and stored earlier to decide if the ad should be delivered. This is often called behavioral targeting or behavioral retargeting.

What is behavioral targeting and retargeting?

Behavioral targeting uses information collected on a visitor’s past web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they performed, to select which advertisements to display to that individual. Wikipedia has an article about Behavioral Targeting.

How does the Behavioral Targeting and Retargeting Plugin for OpenX Ad Server work?

The Behavioral Targeting and Retargeting Plugin adds a table to the OpenX database, and stores information about the visitor in that table. The data is not stored in cookies on the visitor’s computer. It then enables OpenX users to specify delivery limitations to any banner in a campaign based on the stored retargeting data.

Example scenarios for behavioral targeting and retargeting

The only limitation for using the Behavioral Targeting and Retargeting Plugin for OpenX Ad Server is your own imagination. Here are a few examples of how we think you can use this plugin:

• When a visitor enters your shop pages but doesn’t complete a sale, you could display special ads at their next visit, encouraging them to buy your product after all.
• When a visitor searches for information related to a US state, you can target ads to them that are relevant to that state, when they visit one of your other sites.
• If a visitor has viewed a product page on your website more than 5 times, you could conclude they are more than likely to buy the product. By displaying an ad with a special offer or discount at their next visit, you could persuade them to buy the product.
• When someone buys a product from your site, at subsequent visits to your site you can show them ads for related products, supplies or services to complement their initial purchase (up selling and cross selling).

Additional technical details

Data storage mechanism

The data that needs to be captured comes from the actions a visitor performs on a website, or from data the visitor enters. This data is sent to the OpenX Behavioral Targeting and Retargeting Plugin via an API. It requires that the webmaster or developers of the website incorporate this API in their site. There are no restrictions on the programming language used for the site. The plugin supports two types of data storage: single elements like a visitor’s gender or year of birth, and counters like the number of times a visitor has viewed a product page in your shop.

Privacy Measures and Opt-Out Mechanism

Any data stored inside the retargeting data table is completely anonymous. It is not tied to an IP address. The Behavioral Targeting and Retargeting Plugin also supports an opt-out mechanism. This means visitors can indicate they prefer not to be served ads targeted to their search or surfing behavior. Any and all data about the visitor in the OpenX database is removed and no more new data will be collected.

Update: information about availability added.

Screen shots

Click the thumbnails to view larger screen shots of the plugin.

Download

Download: Statistics as Graphs plugin for OpenX 2.8+ Version: 1.0.1 Updated: February 19, 2010 Size: 312.52 KB

New features

In addition to the Global History Graph that was available in the beta version, this new version now has graphs for almost all statistics that OpenX can show:

• Advertiser
• Campaign
• Banner
• Website
• Zone

Graphs are now available for all user types (administrators, managers, advertisers, website owners).

Every graph has buttons to navigate to the previous and next month, or to go up a level to show the current year’s statistics. Clicking a bar will drill down into the underlying statistics, down to a day graph with an hourly break down.

Graphs will show the actual numbers for every bar and dot by positioning the mouse over them.

Improvements

The graphs are now displayed using the open source product “Open Flash Chart 2“, which comes bundled with the plugin. To speed up the display of the graphs, the initial time frame is always the current month.

It seems simple enough

The idea is simple: a developer can create a small piece of software called a plugin, that can be installed inside an existing installation of OpenX. Doing so adds new features to the core software, without the need to make any changes to the original program or software. Plugins can even have their own tables to store and retrieve data in the OpenX database. And when the core system is upgraded to a new version, the plugin will move along with it.

It just isn’t happening

An elegant concept, which has been very successful in other open source projects, like WordPress and SugarCRM, to name just two. So why haven’t we seen a constant flow of OpenX plugins yet?

There is some documentation about developing plugins for OpenX Ad Server, but that’s mostly a list of ideas for plugins, and some links to very early prototypes. These are mostly about making it easier to integrate ads served by OpenX into other applications like blogging software. A plugin to support in-video and video overlay advertising has been announced several times but hasn’t been released yet.

It may be part of the problem that the developers at OpenX haven’t been promoting the plugin concept as much as they could have, except for a blog post announcing the plugin framework in May 2009, and another one in April 2009. Developers are not always aware that they can use it, and users are not always aware that they can extend their system by having a plugin developed. And it does take a little money, time and energy to develop a plugin, which can be hard if there is no outlook for a return on that investment.

Kick starting the OpenX plugin ecosystem

The team at AdServerPlugins.com wants to promote the development of new plugins for OpenX, by releasing plugins that demonstrate the capabilities of the OpenX plugin framework. We will develop free plugins, but we are also available for projects by paying customers to develop bespoke plugins. But we also want to offer the platform of our website www.adserverplugins.com to others, enabling them to promote and distribute their plugins.

In short, we would like to break through the chicken-and-egg situation of customers waiting for developers and developers waiting for customers. We would like to see the emergence of an ecosystem of providers and users of OpenX plugins.

Let us know what you think

We would love to hear what you think about this plan. Please contact us or post your comments below. Feel free to tell us about your ideas for plugins (either as a developer or a user).