Pretty straightforward really – I’m sorry to say this about OpenX because I really did like them for a number of years. Lately, they’re just shit. Yup, completely and utterly shit.

Ever since the name change to OpenX they’ve been going downhill, and I think nearly everyone in the community will agree with me – including some of their very own (former) developers.

Riddled with vulnerabilities, slow and non-required code and other problems we’ve probably all experienced with it. Not to mention no automatic optimization of your ad zones.

This past week, the final straw was picked. My OpenX installation was hacked, AFTER I had applied the latest security fix to it. Talking around to buddies, this happened to a number of people as well. I couldn’t believe it. Of course, I was venting my frustrations to one of my buddies and he told me he had recently switched from OpenX to Google DFP for the very same reasons.

I hadn’t even heard of Google DFP at the time. So, I went over to their site, logged in and got started creating my placements (websites), ad units (ad zones) and my orders (advertisers).

All I have to say is – WOW. It’s actually pretty cool. I remember the first times I was using OpenX it was quite complicated and difficult to understand how to setup the campaigns and the advertisers and ad units. Not so with DFP, just a few minutes of clicking and I figured it out.

Let’s take a look at the process for Google DFP versus OpenX shall we?

Google DFP Process:

1. Login using your existing Google or Google Applications account.
2. Click Inventory, Click Placements
3. Create a placement (eg. Sitename.com-Sidebar)
4. Click Ad Units
5. Create Ad Unit (eg. Sitename.com-Sidebar-Left-125×125)
6. Click Orders
7. Click New Order and add your advertiser, save it, then upload your image or html for the ad.
8. Click Inventory
9. Click ‘Generate Tags’ and copy the code to your page.
10. Wait 10-30 Minutes for Ads to Appear. You’re Done.

OpenX Process:

1. Buy a Domain name for OpenX
2. Buy Server Space for OpenX
3. Create OpenX Database
4. Install OpenX
5. Setup and Configure OpenX  (gfl if on windows hosting by the by)
6. Secure OpenX on your server.
7. Ensure Maintanance Mode is setup for OpenX so your ads will eventually display.
8. Now you can start setting up your ads.
9. First Click Inventory, Then click Websites & Zones
10. Add your website to OpenX
11. Add zones to your website
12. Now click back to Advertisers & Campaigns
13. Add an Advertiser
14. Add a Campaign to your new advertiser
15. Add some banners to your advertisers campaign
16. Set the zones in which your ads will appear  in banner configuration
17. Go back to Websites and Zones
18. Find your website and Zone
19. Click on it, then go to the fourth tab ‘invocation code’
20. Generate your invocation code
21. Go and paste it into your site along with any other relevant code
22. 10-60 minutes later your ads should start appearing.

As you can see OpenX requires a lot more clicks, typing and setup to get your ads and advertisers into the system. Nearly double in-fact. And it’s quite possible I’ve forgotten something here.

With Google DFP it’s actually much easier. Far fewer clicks are required and the added benefit that you can have it fall back to traditional Adsense ads if your network or in-house ads aren’t converting. As far as I understand their documentation the fallback will happen automatically if you select Adsense fallback when creating your ads.

There is one kind of major gotcha that I noticed thought. Due to Adsense terms and conditions, if you have more than 3 ad units on a page no ads will display, even if it’s just fallback to Adsense. Not too big of a deal but still something to note. I had to turn off Adsense fallback for all of my ads except one on the page and then all ads were displaying.

Bottom Line – Google DFP is quicker, easier, and probably far more secure than OpenX to use for your advertising delivery throughout your network. The only problems I’m having with it is the fact that it does sometimes crash Firefox or IE, but I haven’t had any problems with Chrome yet. I do wish they’d make a nice desktop application like they have for Adwords, but I’m sure that’s coming down the pipe.  One other thing I noticed is stats seem to take a long time to show up. As of this writing I’ve had DFP setup for two weeks and I still have no data available to create a report. I’m sure they’re still working out the last bugs in the system so this should be fixed soon.

Anyone else using DFP? What are your thoughts? Have you also migrated from OpenX? Let me know in the comments, I’m interested what others think of Google DFP vs OpenX.

Yup. I said it. And on top of that I also admit that it happened to me.

Rewind about to about 2 years ago when I first got into this industry and I kept saying ‘oh, $500 a month while I sleep would be good enough for me’ and I truly meant it – at that time. People kept telling me once I reached that point I would want more, and of course I didn’t believe them.

So much I’ve learned since then.

Once I was up to $500 a month I wanted that to be $1000, then I wanted it to be $3000 and etc. Well eventually I did reach that point and boy was I on flying. I was so happy with myself, spending money left and right, not really working, and just generally having fun with life. It was honestly the best 6+ months of my life. Did way more things than I had in the past, met a lot of new people, travelled to a bunch places and events and so much more.

This all sounds well and good so what’s the problem?

Cockiness.

Once I started surpassing the amount of money I wanted to earn per month ‘while I slept’ I basically stopped working, and just partied with friends. Sure, I did a bit of work here and there but nowhere near what was required to keep things a-float.

This ended up with me spending all my profits and not re-investing them in any new or, already successful ventures. Huge fucking mistake.

Classic mistake that probably everyone makes but nobody really wants to admit. We’ve all seen the warnings in forums and on IRC but I think a lot of us refuse to believe it will ‘happen to me’. Well, I’m here to tell you that it does, and probably will.

Let’s face it, when you aren’t making any significant money and then suddenly you’re making quite a bit of money while you sleep it’s pretty fucking fantastic. This makes it very easy to lose sight of the original goal, which for me anyway, is to make enough income passively to live and have fun without having to sit at a computer all the time.

This past month it’s really hit hard, with paying bills becoming troublesome etc. And, I’m basically right back to where I didn’t want to be – grinding 60-70 hours a week at the computer just to get back to where I was originally. Had I stuck with it, I’d probably still be down around 5-7 hours of work a week to attain the same financial benefit.

All in all, great lesson learned. I wish I wouldn’t have had to learn it this way, but overall it’s probably best I did because nothing teaches like experience. Take it from me guys (and, gals) don’t get cocky when you start profiting, and keep at it, cause surer than shit something will fail and you’ll go from making thousands, to nothing, literally overnight.

Basically he got the full Canadian experience. Including but not limited to real beer, seeing bears and deer in the wild north, eating poutine, French pornography on TV at all hours of the day and of course Canadian Cigarettes.

Now, you may be wondering, why is this important?

It’s Simple, Really…

Face to face conversations generally mean much more than any electronic mediums – especially when building business relationships. Why do you think that people still fly from New York to Tokyo to meet business associates, sometimes even for seemingly unimportant meetings? That’s right, it’s because more can get discussed, drawn on napkins, explained with hand gestures or even reading micro expressions in person than online. All of this obviously leads to stronger relationships, and ultimately more money down the road.

While it’s easy to converse using instant messaging, telephone and other electronic methods they aren’t always the best. Talking face to face, often leads to more in-depth discussions, and aides in the level of trust that each person or business entity gives to each other.  Not to mention the fact that it seems every cat in this industry has ADD or ADHD, so jumping back and forth from topic to topic in real life can be easier to follow than online with the constant scroll. It sounds silly, but if you think about it I think you’ll probably realize it’s true for you too – why else would you pay all that money to attend the various conferences?

I do think that electronic communications are great for quick ‘hey, what was that offer again’ type things, but when getting right down to discussing business more can be accomplished in 2 hours of talking over beer than often can be done with 10 hours of IRC or Instant Messaging.

I think we got more conducted in 9 days, than we had for the past 2 to 3 months online. For real.

Why did I write this post? Because I think that many in the industry, especially the younger folk take face to face meetings for granted, and would prefer everything to be electronic. When I was younger, I remember my dad telling me to ‘make friends with your banker, don’t do everything electronically’ and that advice has saved me thousands of dollars. The same principle applies to affiliates or any business really. Getting to know someone in real life is better than just being a client number or contact on MSN.

Just the other day, it occurred to me that there’s only a only a few short months left before Affiliate Summit East is happening and that it’s just about time to start thinking about it again.

Last year was a blast, and my first ever conference in the Affiliate/Internet marketing industries so I was pretty green and didn’t really know what to expect. Now that I’ve been to a few other conferences and know a lot more about the industry, its politics and the people involved I’m sure it will be even better than my experience was last year.

This year I’m hoping to conduct a little more business and sight-seeing than partying. I’ve been to New York several times but never really took the opportunity to travel around the city seeing some of the more popular things so that should be fun and also a little easier on the liver than last year. Not to mention the pocketbook – 40$ for two gin and tonics, WTF?!@?

With parties having guest appearances by people like Biz Markie it’s certainly hard to not get caught up in running around town all night partying with your friends. Alas, one should remember that the primary goal of any conference is to meet people, get new ideas, and discuss business whether it be deals, mergers, or simply ideas for the future whether collaborative or not.

Last year I didn’t spend much time at the conference itself, instead I went through the exhibit floor meeting many of the networks and affiliates. However, I was still hesitant as to what I should have been asking or even talking about because I was still relatively new to the industry. So, instead I kind of sat back and watched as my Internet buddies did the talking and I absorbed the information I needed.

This changes as you hit more conferences and meet more people while of course learning more about the industry. This year I expect it to be even better than the past Affiliate Summit’s I’ve attended because I personally know more about the industry as a whole.

Flatly, this year can only be better because last time was fucking rad and I was newb.

This year I intend to meet more people on the floor and probably visit a few or more sessions if I can to see what trends the more experienced people are talking about, and just to network a little further into the scene. While the forum crowd is a great resource and many friends can be made, I’ve certainly met other people on a whim at a conference that have turned out to be better partners or friends.

Looking forward to seeing you all again, I’m sure I’ll think of more to write sooner to the conference.

And now, back to el’ grind.

Note that these numbers are from November 2009 through Jan 2010, and I’m still working on this campaign so I still won’t be telling y’all what I’m actually running with. Look for a new case study coming up in the next few weeks or months. Probably months knowing my slackass style.

For this campaign I ran things a little differently. If you remember from my last post, what I did was have about 600 keywords spread out over a few ads in one ad group. This time though I did it differently and set things with a new method. I went with;

• 20 ad groups
• each ad group having 1 keyword
• 3 ads based around those keywords.

I ran with this formula on Bing and Yahoo, but with bidvertiser I just ran with the highest performing ads from the two networks combined with some simple math to calculate which was the overall best ad.

So, on to the numbers shall we?

BIDVERTISER

With Bidvertiser, as with all my previous attempts with them I had horrible click through’s with relatively high impressions. I know some people love bidvertiser, but I just haven’t figured it out yet. I probably won’t try much more with them till I’m baller like some of you guys and can afford to throw away money

Bidvertiser Spend: 12.54 Bidvertiser CPC: $0.96 Bidvertiser Impressions: 75,291 Bidvertiser Clicks: 13 Bidvertiser Sales: 0

Bidvertiser Statistics

YAHOO

As with the last campaign, I started out with Yahoo, and then once I started getting traffic and clicks I paused the underperforming groups and migrated the performing ones to Bing and Bidvertiser. I did see one sale, so I made some of my investment back on this one, but not nearly as much as I had hoped, especially with my highly targeted ad groups, and ads per ad group. I am still confident in yahoo though because I had relatively high impressions over this amount of time, however my CPC was way high, I wished it would get down to what BING was doing, but apparently not.

YAHOO Spend: $156.92 YAHOO CPC: $0.71 YAHOO Impressions: 37,193 YAHOO Clicks: 220 YAHOO Sales: 1

Yahoo Statistics

BING

This was hands down my best experience ever with PPC. I had 3 sales getting me around $144 before removing my initial investment of $2.12. This is simply awesome. I don’t know why it dried up but I will be going back and revamping the campaign to hit BING with again because I haven’t seen sales like this ever before, especially with limited impressions and very limited clicks. Fucking awesome.

BING Spend: $2.12 BING CPC: $0.30 BING Impressions: 198 BING Clicks: 7 BING Sales: 3

Bing Statistics

SUMMARY

So let’s total it all up.

Total Spend across all networks: $171.58
Total Impressions across all networks: 112,682
Total Clicks across all networks: 240
Total Sales across all networks: 4
Total Commission amount: $192
Total Profit: $20.42

As you can see, I was profitable. Not very much, but I was profitable. So, this campaign was definitely a win for a PPC newbie like me. If you remember last time, I was still 80$ shy of actually turning a profit, so even $1 would be a win for me at this point.

What have I learned off this one? Bing apparently fucking rocks, or I just hit the right market at the right time – I guess we’ll see on the next test. I do think I’ll drop bidvertiser indefinitely and probably yahoo too since my spend was so high compared to Bing. Yahoo, nothing much, same old shit – I just need to refine my process with them, and probably develop more ads along the way – I just ran out of money to keep testing.

Now on to more testing.

Last summer was my first visit to an Affiliate Summit, which I went to in New York City, I thought it was a great time, and a lot of people to meet – however, I was still pretty newb at that point so I really wasn’t sure what kinds of questions I was supposed to be asking, who I should be talking to or even the right lingo to use. So, I mostly sat back and just absorbed like a sponge and used that knowledge to further my business over the next few months.

Affiliate Summit West was completely different, this time around I knew who to talk to, what questions I should be asking, and most important, how to make myself more money and enjoy the entrepreneurial lifestyle of never setting an alarm, and working when, and where I want.

This time around I met a lot more actual business contacts, and discussed things with them. However, I will note that the partying in Las Vegas is a little crazy – if you really want to conduct business I would suggest New York over Vegas – while there may be more people in Vegas, there’s also a lot more opportunity to get yourself into trouble and not pay attention to the real reason we’re there – monies.

Also, I know this has been said before, but the amount of paid women in Vegas is pretty much disgusting. Who cares if you get a shitload of pictures with your arm around some woman that cost 1000 bucks an hour, if you think that’s baller because of that then you need to give your head a shake. Sorry guys. New York has a lot more – REAL – women, that don’t charge by the hour and are more than happy to talk to you about your nerdy business. Trust me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting down Las Vegas, or ASW – it was a great time and I’ll be going next year for sure. I really do feel that more business can be conducted in a little more relaxed environment like New York though.

Contrary to the previous summit I went to – I already knew a bunch of people this time so it was a lot easier to get around and go see the town, and meet more people in the extended circle of internet marketers that I chill with. So that was a definite plus to the whole experience, and the meet market was absolutely huge in comparison to what I remember from New York – not to mention the exhibit space. There were so many exhibitors present, that I had to go back 3 times to pick up all the free shwag (yes, we all are suckers for the free tshirts that fall apart after 3 washes aren’t we? – hint hint – buy better shirts exhibitors!) and to meet all the interesting companies that were showing off the latest and greatest products that we can help them sell.

To me, that was the biggest benefit of Las Vegas and Affiliate Summit – was that the sheer amount of people, exhibitors and speakers surpassed that of New York. Basically what I’m saying here is, go to Las Vegas to find a shitload of offers, and then hit up New York to conduct more business and get those offers sending dollars to your bank account.

But, what if you still don’t know where to get traffic for these wonderful offers?

Enter Ad:Tech. I wasn’t familiar with this conference until early last year – remember, I said I am still considerably newb compared to other folks out there. Anyway, I heard it time and time again, if you’re looking for traffic hit up Ad:Tech.

So, that’s what I’ll be doing this coming April with a few friends. These two conferences put together, from what I’ve heard anyway – are the best stepping stones into really ramping up business in this industry. Affiliate Summit for the products and ideas, and Ad:Tech for the traffic to run to your shiny new offers. It’s really a simple concept, but nobody ever said it to me like that so maybe this will help someone else out too.

I hope to see a bunch of you again at Ad:Tech, and the coming Affiliate Summit East in New York City.

Fun times brah’s.

No. I wasn’t paid for this post, just got this random email from them explaining their product and to check it out – probably because OpenX has my email address or because I’m on their consultancy list with one of my other companies.

I thought I’d contact you to introduce you to Adtelligence, a new analytics application which will change the way agencies, ad networks and publishers will monitor the performance of campaigns, and report information to their advertisers, and help you reinforce the value of OpenX to your clients.

Adtelligence sits on top of OpenX (*) and offers a level of intuitiveness, customization and convenience that are unknown in ad serving and campaign reporting… and at no cost for the product currently online.

(*) Adtelligence is however compatible with the OpenX Community Download and OpenX Enterprise only. We’re not able to accommodate users of the OpenX Community Hosted product.

At a later stage, Adtelligence will also deliver inventory optimization and yield management capabilities, helping your clients and any media agencies, large publishers and ad networks make the right decisions regarding the management of their advertising inventory. Since we’re planning to charge these future applications, we will want to discuss with you at that point a model that will let you benefit financially from the commercialization of these applications to your clients.

We’d love to get your views on Adtelligence, and would therefore recommend you take a look at the product demo at www.adtelligence.net. Also feel free to start using the product with your clients, if you think the product is right for them.

Thank you for helping us gain visibility with your clients and future OpenX users. We’d be happy to speak with you over the phone, in the event you’d like to know more about our project and company.

And, here’s their video.

If I remember I’ll post an update after I check it out and what my thoughts are on it.

ASW Post is still severely late, but it’s coming I swear.

This year I did it a bit differently than last year, I took a friend of mine down with me because he is thinking about getting his product into the marketing world we live in and away from the traditional outlets he’s currently using. It was cool to have someone to share expenses with too.

We got our trip booked up the day before Christmas for a pretty good rate, I think it was like 580$ Canadian, after tax for Jan 16 – 22^nd. I think we were a little drunk when we ordered the tickets though because we didn’t realize our trip back had 3 stops – oh well, that’s what you get for being cheap. Who needs first class when I had 1500$ left to spend in Vegas instead eh!

This year was funny I probably took more photos of our trips through the airports than I did of most of vegas and the show – I have a couple, but they’re on other peoples real cameras since I only had my mobile with me for picture taking.

Lets start with this monstrosity, it was something my buddy ordered at the Fox Sports Bar at the Detroit Airport. Whats funny is, his beer was nearly double the cost of all this sickening food. And we wonder why both our countries have problems with obesity!

He did manage to eat most of it. I didn’t touch it. I’m against everything Fox especially their food.

There was also this wicked tunnel at the airport. I was saying that it’d be rad to hold a flashmob down there for 3 minutes and then all run to get onto a flight somewhere. Sadly it’s behind security, but check this shit out – the lights and music are all in sync and everything!

After being mesmerized by the tunnel a few times we went to another bar and chilled and then went to another and chilled and then finally it was time for our flight to Las Vegas. 4 Hour flight nothing special. I wasn’t used to American airlines or Continental, they didn’t have TV’s in the seats and they were super oldschool compared to what I’m used to from Air Canada.

We eventually got to Vegas after an uneventful flight and went to our hotel. Then we went to Meet up with BofU, Brentdev, Enigmabomb and Russell P  for an evening of drinking and walking around the strip. Went home to sleep after that. Later that day met up with MattF too, there’s always a soft-spot for other canucks in the scene.

Took these the next day outside the conference, the only sunny day we had!

and the rest of the days looked something like this

But that’s okay cause we got to go to exclusive parties at in the Palms Towers later the next evening to stay out of the rain. Some crazy shit went down there, and I learned a new term “Making It Rain”, very interesting indeed.Thanks again to Gigidawg for getting us in. Also met up with Ian from Opes Media that night for a bit, always great to see old friends. Later on we met up with the Off White Hat for some drunken gambling with his friend Duncan the Architect/Photographer.

This was the view from the party, sorry I was shaky, it was an open bar. Very open.

That big red building is the Rio, where Affiliate Summit West was held. Cool.

Some cool LED Lights

That’s looking up the palms tower where the party was at.

Then we went home to nap for more partying later.

Where Brentdev, Enigmabomb, myself and my buddy chatted up some girls from Ireland. Fun times. Bitches still haven’t friended us on facebook yet, wtf!

I don’t know what that paper is, maybe my phone number? haha.

wtf is this

6 pound burrito? gross. GROSS.

view from Jeff of Equte‘s and Sam of CompeteSEO hotel room. There’s the other Palms tower and the Rio in the day time. I don’t really like heights I couldn’t get closer than a foot to the balcony up here haha.

I was promoting a new venture with stickers around Vegas and we met these crazy fools from New Zealand. This guy climbed a light for me to stick one of the stickers up. Thanks Jeremy!

Taken early morning, drunk stumbling around Vegas. I like the composition.

Cool picture of the Flamingo. I like their marquee, it’s cold chillin oldschool flava.

The infamous AKMG skateboard Fiasco that Brentter, Myself, @phillian and Sam were involved in.Thanks Eleah you guys are pretty cool!

And finally. Let’s not forget the most important rule.

So that’s all the pictures I took that I can show you, but it gives you a different perspective of what these conferences are also about besides the bling bling and showboating lifestyle, it’s also about friends, seeing the sights, networking with associates on a more personal level and just generally having a blast.

Later today I’ll write up an actual informative post about my thoughts on ASW 2010 Las Vegas this year.

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