The idea

There is a lot of software products that help manage advertising stock for websites. OpenX is probably most popular, Google introduced its own Ad Manager offering and of course there are many more.

We have been using OpenX to manage advertisting at developers.org.ua for more than 2 years and we are not very happy with it. For a start, it is big and complicated. Its complexity is the other side for its reach and features.

It is designed for sites which have many millons imporessions per month, where a lot of people involved (agencies, support, ad sites) and complex and flexible rule setup is really needed.

But most sites aren't that big and they would get along with a much simpler solution. At least, we would certainly do.

The other problem with OpenX is usability and performance. It doesn't serve the ads in the most efficient way possible which has direct impact on our users. We had to do lots of trickery to make sure the pages load quickly and slow loading ads do not irritate user.

I think there must be a better solution. Simpler to administer, efficient and unobtrusive for website's users. It won't have half as many features as OpenX/Google Ad manager but it might be just want small to medium size sites need. That is what we are going to build.