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Open Source Ad Server Roundup

I found this vlog post about a social network building their own advertising infrastructure to be interesting.  Basically, Dogster founder Ted Rheingold (whose lapdog gives him a Bond-villian-like presence during the interview) argues that building your own ad pipeline is harder than using an ad network, but is far more profitable and sustainable.  Ad networks are easy to slap in and give a startup instant revenue, but automated content targeting leaves something to be desired.  In addition, there’s no relationship built between the content purveyor and the advertiser, which leaves the content purveyor more vulnerable to advertising cutbacks.  Advertising salespeople are the easiest to hire, and the easiest to fire, as they should pay for themselves.  (As an aside, here’s an interesting article by Jakob Nielsen talking about how “paid search confiscates too much of a website’s value.”)

I passed it along to a friend who is building a directory site around local Colorado farmers and food and he mentioned some interest in it.  On my own, I took a look around to see what was available for self managed website advertising, and was surpised at the paucity of good open source ad serving software out there.  After all, advertising is one of the great business models (of the web, and of all time); I expected to see a bit more code out there.  But perhaps ad network software isn’t anyone’s itch.  Or maybe there’s no demand for it–sites are either small enough to use Adsense, or they are big enough to pay for a commercial ad server.  Regardless, here’s what I found:

There were a number of projects on source forge that seemed appropriate, but nothing that was actively maintained and useful (lots of projects started in 2001, and dormant).  Adsapient seemed the most useful, but they say on their website: “AdSapient Ad Server is an open source ad server that can be used as a platform for building your own ad serving technology. We recommend using it for educational purposes though.”  Not exactly a ringing endorsement.  Update, 4/27/2009: Someone who worked on Adsapient has started a new ad server.  More information below.

For some reason, this didn’t show up on my search of Sourceforge, but OASIS is definitely an ad serving and management solution.  Last release was 2007.
There is a company that offers hosted OASIS and OpenX ad serving solutions, but they’re rather pricey.  Another (closed source) option is Google’s ad management solution.

The best solution I could find was OpenX.  They have a demo site that works, they are continuing development as you read this, they have a free hosted solution good for up to 25 million impressions a month, and at that time, you can choose to either pay them a monthly fee, or download, install and configure the software and run the ad server on your own box.

Now, I haven’t spent enough time with the OpenX UI to know if there are dealbreakers in there, but based on pricing, ongoing development effort and freedom, I would definitely recommend OpenX.  Here’s an interesting discussion comparing the hosted OpenX solution and Google Ad Manager.

[tags]google ad manager,openx, oasis, ad serving, hosted ad solutions[/tags]

The Gift Of Negative Feedback

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” – Bill Gates

One of the hardest things to do as a consultant is to admit I screwed up. After all, I’m brought in to solve problems that the client could not or would not address. I’m paid a lot of money (compared to employees, not hedgies). I have a reputation to uphold–that’s how I sell myself.

But, of course, I’m human, and make mistakes. One of the greatest gifts a client can give me is honest feedback on how I erred. It’s a gift because

  • I learn something
  • it takes the client’s time
  • it takes the client’s emotional energy
  • it would be so much easier for the client to just say nothing and not use me again

Did you catch that? Instead of the usual transaction which is trading my knowledge and time to the client for money, the client is giving me knowledge.

It’s precious.

But don’t think it’s easy!

I screwed up recently and was given the gift of negative feedback. My first instinct was to reach for the requirements, or review emails, or figure out some other way to prove to the client that I was not in the wrong.

But the simple fact is that, if the client isn’t satisfied, a consultant is not in the right (I’m leaving aside clients that you should fire). It’s easy for me to think I’m selling hours and knowledge, but what I’m really selling is satisfaction. I don’t want to take a red cent from someone who isn’t satisfied with my work.

So, I had to sit and breath, walk and think, and just generally process this gift. After having done so, I communicated with my client, re-iterated my goal of his satisfaction, and proposed a compromise on my invoice. He was happy with that and we went on to do another project. I’m hoping he’ll consider me for more work in the future, but even if he doesn’t, the lessons I learned were well worth the cost of the compromise.

What A Scam: “Colorado Corporate Compliance”

If you are part of a Colorado corporation and get an “Annual Minutes Disclosure Statement” request from Colorado Corporate Compliance, you should read this notice from the Secretary of State’s office:

The Colorado Secretary of State’s office has recently become aware that entities by the names “Colorado Corporate Compliance” and “Board of Business Compliance” have mailed solicitations titled “Annual Minutes Disclosure Statement” or “Disclosure Statement” to many Colorado entities. These solicitations offer to process corporate meeting minutes on behalf of the corporation for a fee. Despite the implications contained in the solicitations, Colorado corporations are not required by law to file corporate minutes with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.

The warning signs were there: I had not received this notice before, the timeline seemed short (sent on Sep 3, due on Sep 15), and the $150 fee seemed a bit steep. But, if I hadn’t searched for this company, I probably would have sent a check–it looks official. (To be fair, it does, at the bottom of the back of the form, say what the service is actually about–making minutes available to members of a corporation). Just goes to show you that the scammers aren’t just out to protect your domain names or send you virulent spam.
[tags]scam, colorado corporate compliance[/tags]

Business Process Crystallization

I’m in the process of helping a small business migrate an application that they use from Paradox back end to a PostgreSQL back end. The front end will remain written in Paradox. (There are a number of reasons for this–they’d like to have a more robust database, capable of handling more users. Also, Paradox is on the way out. A google search doesn’t turn up any pages from corel.com in the top 10. Ominous?)

I wrote this application a few years ago. Suffice it to say that I’ve learned a lot since then, and wish I could rectify a few mistakes. But that’s another post. What I’d really like to talk about now is how computer programs crystallize business processes.

Business processes are ‘how things get done.’ For instance, I write software and sell it. If I have a program to write, I specify the requirements, get the client to sign off on them (perhaps with some negotiation), design the program, code the program, test it, deploy it, make changes that the client wants, and maintain it. This is a business process, but it’s pretty fluid. If I need to get additional requirements specification after design, I can do that. Most business processes are fluid, with a few constraints. These constraints can be positive: I need to get client sign off (otherwise I won’t get paid). Or they can be negative: I can’t program .NET because I don’t have Visual Studio.NET, or I can’t program .NET because I don’t want to learn it.

Computerizing tasks can make processes much, much easier. Learning how to mail merge can save time when invoicing, or sending out those ever impressive holiday gift cards. But everything has its cost, and computerizing processes is no different. Processes become harder to change after a program has been written or installed to ‘help’ with them. For small businesses, such process engineering is doubly calcifying, because few folks have time to think about how to make things better (they’re running just as fast as they can to stay in place) and also because computer expertise is at a premium. (Realizing this is a fact and that folks will take a less technically excellent solution if it’s maintainable by normal people is what has helped MicroSoft make so much money. The good is the enemy of the best and if you can have a pretty good solution for one quarter of the price of a perfect solution, most folks will choose the first.)

So, what happens? People, being more flexible than computers, adjust themselves to the process, which, in a matter of months or years, may become obsolete. It may not do what they need it to do, or it may require them to do extra labor. However, because it is a known constraint and it isn’t worth the investment to change, it remains. I’ve seen cruft in computer programs (which one friend of mine once declared was nothing but condensed business knowledge), but I’m also starting to realize that cruft exists in businesses too. Of course, sweeping away business process cruft assumes the same risks as getting rid of code cruft. There are costs to getting rid of the unneeded processes, and the cost of finding the problems, fixing them, documenting them, and training employees on the new ones, may exceed the cost of just putting up with them.

“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history – with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.” -Mitch Ratcliffe, Technology Review, April 1992

A computer, for the virtue of being able to instantaneously recall and process vast amounts of data, also crystallizes business processes, making it harder to change them. In additional to letting you make mistakes quickly, it also forces you to let mistakes stand uncorrected.