OpenX Source is an open-source and PHP-based advertising server, featuring an integrated banner management interface and tracking system for gathering statistics. It enables web site administrators to rotate banners from both in-house advertisement campaigns as well as from paid or third-party sources, such as Google's AdSense. It provides standard banner rotation, click tracking, zone-based ad selection, zone-based campaign targeting, direct ad selection, ad targeting (per browser, domain, language, etc.), ad capping and full Adobe Flash support, etc. Refer to http://www.openx.com/.

The following diagram shows the main terms used in the Ad server OpenX 2.8.

 

Ad server: Normally operated by a third party, an ad server delivers and tracks ads on websites. Ad servers perform a useful role in building trust between advertisers and publishers since the statistics they supply are likely to be free of spin.

Ad space: The area on a web page set aside for the display of ads.

Ad units: These refer to the different types of ads which appear online, including banners, interstitials, pop-ups, skyscrapers and text links.

Affiliate marketing: An advertising system based on the CPA (Cost Per Action) payment method, where websites display advertisers' banners for free but receive payment when registrations or sales result from click throughs.

AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action - a simple marketing acronym that describes the supposed path to successful selling.

Banner: This is an ad that appears on a web page which is typically hyperlinked to an advertiser's website. Banners can be images (GIF, JPEG, PNG), JavaScript programs or multimedia objects (Flash, Java, Shockwave etc.).

Campaign: Refers to an advertising project in its entirety, from conception through creation and buying to tracking and final analysis.

For more online terms, refer to online-advertising-terms.

In general, there are three main parts that OpenX Ad server provides.

1. Inventory - banners management
2. Delivery – ads publishing
3. Statistics – ads tracking and reporting

This article is going to address an extension for part 2 – seamless integration of OpenX Ad Server in Liferay Portal 6, implemented as a portlet plugin called ForgeAds Publisher.

This plugin has been released for different versions of Liferay Portal such as 6.0 CE/EE and 6.1 CE/EE. If needed, it can run in other Liferay version like 5.2 and 5.1 with some additional customization.

Integration Overview

The following diagram depicts an integration overview.

On the Ad server side, it includes, but is not limited to, inventory management, user & role management, AIDA management, etc. On the portal side, the involved components cover user and role management, auditing, reporting and ads publisher.

The integration approach

The integration is configurable as follows

As shown above, it supports all major relational databases like Oracle and MySQL and can link to any OpenX Ad Server.

The Ad server and Liferay Portal with ForgeAds Publisher can be installed on the same server (with different port numbers) or two different servers.

ForgeAds Publisher

ForegeAds Publisher has the following features:

1) Publishing ads with Liferay comments and ratting

2)  Sharing the Ad to any web page through the typical Liferay Portal Sharing feature

 3) Flexible search capabilities for ForgeAds Publisher administrator.

Basic search by keyword:

Advanced search:

4) Synchronization with OpenX Ad Server automatically on Liferay ForgeAds Publisher configuration page

 

Live demo

Demo server (Liferay portal 6.1 GA1): http://ads.forgelife.net:8090
Demo account: demo@forgelife.com/ForgeAds

OpenX Test server (OpenX 2.8.8): http://openx.forgelife.net/openx
Admin account: openx/openx - You are the openx Ad server admin, so please do not change admin password and permissions. 

Download URL

6.1 CE / EE

6.0.6 CE and 6.0 EE

5.2 CE / EE

5.1 CE / EE