I received an email from Steven Finch over at Crenk.com that OpenX, one of the best free ad ad serving software on the Net, has launched an hosted version for people who don’t have the resources to install the program on their servers.
OpenX Hosted beta is the same professional ad management tool used to control the advertising on over 100,000 websites around the world, only hosted on OpenX hardware. The best thing about the service is it’s free as long as you don’t serve more than 25 million ads per month. I suspect OpenX started this hosted service in response to Google Ad Manager, which is also free.
As nice as OpenX Hosted and Google Ad Manager are, I still feel the best ad serving solution for bloggers is OIOpublisher Direct. Unlike OpenX and Ad Manager, OIOpublisher is a complete blog monetization solution. With OIOpublisher direct, advertisers can order, pay for and upload their ads directly to your blog. The only thing you have to do is approve the ad.
If you already have an in-house sale staff, then OpenX is a fantastic ad serving solution. I use OpenX for my technology sites and like the interface much more than Google Ad Manager. Having a hosted solution is just one more reason to stick with them.
