OpenX Upgrades Ad Technology Platform, Takes Groupon, Others Along For The Ride

OpenX, provider of digital advertising technology for Web publishers around the world, has updated the ad technology platform currently in use by online juggernauts like Groupon, Orange-France Telecom and Excite Japan. The true strength of the platform is that it combines both powerful ad serving capabilities and real-time bidding on ad inventory within a single product (OpenX Enterprise, to be more precise).

The platform, which becomes available to all publishers today, is designed to help publishers efficiently manage a variety of digital revenue streams and optimize non-guaranteed and real-time bidded advertising demand. All in a single interface.

Another noteworthy component of the OpenX Enterprise platform is an integrated data collection and targeting system that allows publishers to use both proprietary and third-party data to enable audience-based media buying across their entire inventory.

The platform comes with a complete API framework and object-based design, making it relatively easy to integrate with other components of the publisher’s enterprise software stack.

Today, OpenX’ ad-serving products are used by more than 200,000 websites in more than 100 countries, and serve more than 350 billion ads monthly. Its other product, OpenX Market, is said to reach more than 400 million monthly unique users all over the globe.

Groupon has been using OpenX Enterprise for quite some time now to power ads on its website and email blasts in the US, but for French telecom giant Orange the adoption of the platform means a move away from Google’s DoubleClick. If anything, this shows OpenX can effectively compete with giants like Google, but also Yahoo and our parent company AOL.

The move is, however, not that surprising, considering both companies already had a partnership in place for the joint operation of a European advertising marketplace.

Los Angeles-based OpenX is backed by investors like Accel Partners, First Round Capital and Index Ventures, and is headed by CEO Tim Cadogan, a former senior Yahoo exec.