In addition to setting up your own private label network, you can buy and sell inventory on their exchange. This lets you appear bigger than you are. For example, if you are able to sign up a publisher in your niche, you can immediately start trafficking relevant ads to show him you're capable. You'll make more money attracting Advertisers in your niche to buy those impressions, but that's a chicken/egg problem that being part of an exchange helps with.
Open X is definitely a good tool to get you up and running cheaply, but isn't as full featured as some of the other ad servers (ie. DFP)
Keep in mind that the entire display ecosystem is already on / moving towards an exchange-based model (rather than a network based model). Most networks now buy a lot of their inventory directly from the exchange.
So if you're looking to start your own network, you should be thinking about building it on top of the exchanges, and you should also have some unique offering: expertise in display / optimization, unique data set, etc.
There are a lot of plugins for Open X offering additional functionality. A case could be made that as OSS, it's got the potential to face more challenges than DFP, though obviously offer some additional ones as well (like having to manage your own servers).
It sounds like the poster has a niche market he (or she) understands. In that situation, I don't think technology needs to be a selling point.
Yea I'm in a niche, I see an opportunity and feel that I have the connections to bring publishers and advertisers together and create my own (small) network, but not sure how to set it up (the technology side). I'm thinking about doing an invite only type of network and focus on the targeted advertising advantage.
I'm not just talking tech -- I'm talking biz model. Most major advertisers buy directly from the exchange now, and the poster will have a hard time both A) selling to clients and B) making enough margin to stay in business if he doesn't understand how this works.
I'm definitely trying to learn as much as I can about this before jumping into it, but I have made some great connections takes to my existing business thats within the niche.
I would strongly recommend you do NOT use OpenX. I used it for a few years, but eventually got fed up with the constant security problems. They do not promptly release patches for known security problems, so after seeing a particularly widely available remote exploit go unpatched for months early this year, I had to replace it with DFP.
This is a problem with the downloadable version, which is written for the LAMP stack and grew over something like 10 years as an open-source effort. Not surprisingly, YMMV (as with all OS software).
The hosted version (called OnRamp) would be the place to start - it's free, performs better (it's not all PHP), and gives you easy market integration (which the original comment was referring to). OpenX may or may not be what you're looking for, but at least you can test the waters without any initial investment other than creating an account and setting up a few tags.
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Check out OpenX http://www.openx.org/
In addition to setting up your own private label network, you can buy and sell inventory on their exchange. This lets you appear bigger than you are. For example, if you are able to sign up a publisher in your niche, you can immediately start trafficking relevant ads to show him you're capable. You'll make more money attracting Advertisers in your niche to buy those impressions, but that's a chicken/egg problem that being part of an exchange helps with.
Open X is definitely a good tool to get you up and running cheaply, but isn't as full featured as some of the other ad servers (ie. DFP)
Keep in mind that the entire display ecosystem is already on / moving towards an exchange-based model (rather than a network based model). Most networks now buy a lot of their inventory directly from the exchange.
So if you're looking to start your own network, you should be thinking about building it on top of the exchanges, and you should also have some unique offering: expertise in display / optimization, unique data set, etc.
There are a lot of plugins for Open X offering additional functionality. A case could be made that as OSS, it's got the potential to face more challenges than DFP, though obviously offer some additional ones as well (like having to manage your own servers).
It sounds like the poster has a niche market he (or she) understands. In that situation, I don't think technology needs to be a selling point.
Yea I'm in a niche, I see an opportunity and feel that I have the connections to bring publishers and advertisers together and create my own (small) network, but not sure how to set it up (the technology side). I'm thinking about doing an invite only type of network and focus on the targeted advertising advantage.
I'm not just talking tech -- I'm talking biz model. Most major advertisers buy directly from the exchange now, and the poster will have a hard time both A) selling to clients and B) making enough margin to stay in business if he doesn't understand how this works.
I'm definitely trying to learn as much as I can about this before jumping into it, but I have made some great connections takes to my existing business thats within the niche.
Jeremy is dead on, take note of this comment
I would strongly recommend you do NOT use OpenX. I used it for a few years, but eventually got fed up with the constant security problems. They do not promptly release patches for known security problems, so after seeing a particularly widely available remote exploit go unpatched for months early this year, I had to replace it with DFP.
This is a problem with the downloadable version, which is written for the LAMP stack and grew over something like 10 years as an open-source effort. Not surprisingly, YMMV (as with all OS software).
The hosted version (called OnRamp) would be the place to start - it's free, performs better (it's not all PHP), and gives you easy market integration (which the original comment was referring to). OpenX may or may not be what you're looking for, but at least you can test the waters without any initial investment other than creating an account and setting up a few tags.
(Disclaimer: I work for OpenX.)