OpenX's Open Source Ad Serving Showing Signs of Strength

OpenX, the open source ad server for web publishers, is out with some very strong statistics today.  We've written about the company before, and how it lets you manage a mix of ads from multiple networks. While many have questioned how the small  company can compete with Google Ad Manager, there are some signs that it is doing an effective job. Many large sites, including TechCrunch, use OpenX. Here are some thoughts on the company's results.

According to OpenX's report, more than 300 billion ad impressions are carried through its service each month. The company's relatively new OpenX Hosted product now has over 1 billion monthly ad impressions, and 2,500 new publishers have signed up for it, according to the company. The firm's core offering--the OpenX Ad Server--also has more than 10,000 active downloads and has achieved a 25 billion monthly ad impression run rate.

Those numbers are nothing to sneeze at. OpenX is steadily building a set of fee-based professional services around its ad servers, in addition to support offerings. The company seeks to offer a neutral ad serving approach, as opposed to Google's, and is pursuing some new initiatives to open up ways for web publishers to hook up with advertisers.

Given the dominance Google has in the online advertising space, it's good to see open source competition emerging, and OpenX has some big hitters at the top. Its chairman is Jonathan Miller, formerly the CEO of AOL, and its CEO is Tim Cadogan, formerly a top Yahoo! executive. The company has raised more than $20 million in funding, and is clearly emerging as an alternative way to make use of many networks.

You can try a live demo of OpenX and learn more about how it works here.