 Joomla! core member Peter Russell has been on a sabbatical of sorts and during this time he's been looking at a range of open source projects. Today, Pete talks with OpenX founder and CTO, Scott Switzer. Scott, 38, drives the product vision and is the OpenX community leader. Scott works at OpenX's London office or out of a suitcase—he travels a lot. University trained (Vermont), he has been a software architect for large software systems such as for GEHealthcare. He was formerly the co-founder/CTO for other media companies, like M3 and article 27.
Pete Q. Scott,please explain the journey that has seen you involved in Open Source?
Scott A. As the co-founder of article 27, we spent lots of time thinking how to break into a software market with established players. At the time, I advocated an open source model, but we could not build a supporting business model. That decision, and subsequent exit of the company, provided the challenge for me to build a business plan which would support open source software for my next company. We decided on a services model with M3 MediaServices, now part of Unanimis Consulting. We built upon OpenX software (which was open source), and released a hosted service based upon the software.
Q. How do you reconcile Open Source and the commercial path OpenX is taking?
A. When starting OpenX we decided to not charge for software or services, but instead charge advertisers a percentage if we connect them with one of our publishers. Because OpenXcharges advertisers, our publishers seem to be fine with this as long as OpenX continues to maximise the value that their inventory is worth.
Q. How many developers do you have on board and where are they based?
A. We have around 15 full-time developers based in Europe (London, Poland, Italy), and other community developers based around the world.
Q. What does OpenX do for publishers and why would they want to use it opposed to just AdSense?
A. Publishers like to use OpenX to deliver advertising from ad networks like AdSense. This way, they have technology which gives them independent statistics on how their campaigns are performing as well as the ability to control numerous advertisers and ad networks simultaneously so that the maximum revenue can be achieved. |
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