Case study: Create Digital Music

The background
Create Digital Music is a webzine and community site for musicians that focuses on technological production techniques. As a niche publisher CDM is aware that its advertisers need to extract maximum value from the inventory they purchase, so an effective ad-serving solution is of key importance.

Coming to OpenX
“At one point we were directly hosting Google AdSense,” says Peter Kirn, CDM’s editor-in-chief and publisher, “but we’re always looking for things that make our lives easier and OpenX fitted into that category.” CDM now hosts AdSense through OpenX. “The installation and set-up was very easy. If you’re savvy enough to install WordPress then you can easily install OpenX.”

Why OpenX?
“What we look for when we’re choosing tools and platforms,” says Peter,“are ones that are exceptionally well-supported. We’re always looking for platforms where there’s some leadership in the community that’s supporting and developing them. We want to make sure that there are systems in place that we don’t have to worry about, so we can worry about other things.”

Did switching to OpenX increase CDM’s ad revenue?
“Oh yeah, it made an immediate difference. I think it’s a really good system for mixing Google AdSense ads with the higher CPM campaigns that we get with direct ad sales. It’s made a big difference.”

Using the technology
“I think the amount of control that you have over ad zones, the fine, granular control you have over campaigns, is what I like best,” says Peter. “Also, I’ve never looked for a feature and not found it there. If people ask, ‘Can you do X or Y?’ the answer always seems to be ‘yes’. And the ability to say ‘yes’ to people trying to buy ads is a big benefit.

“To have a system that you can control and maintain, that’s running on your servers and isn’t in anybody else’s hands, it’s really opening some doors as we move forward.”

The importance of communication
“It’s rare to have a system where communication is open and you feel like people are listening, where you know what’s going on with the platform and what’s coming next. That makes a really big difference, and is really important for anything that you rely on in the way that we rely on ads. OpenX is something that’s already grown with us, and we are confident it will grow with us in the future. That empowers us to do some of the things that we’d like to do, and take some of the risks we want to take,” concludes Peter.