The latest version of OpenX 2.8 is doing reasonably well

Formerly known by a succession of different names, including Openads, OpenX has developed its ad server essentially through the open-source developer community over a time span of nine years. It has raised almost $20.5 million in two rounds of funding thus far.

The company stated it had witnessed rapid growth in spite of the sudden slowdown experienced in online advertising market largely owing to the ongoing recession. The latest version of OpenX 2.8, its free ad serving software, has already attracted over 3,000 active users and also a monthly run rate of over 10 billion impressions in just six weeks since its launch. But with close to 300 billion impressions running through OpenX software, it clearly has room to expand further and become profitable

OpenX stated it would be using the additional funds for the purpose of expanding its suite of technology products and services and accelerating the growth of its recently launched OpenX Market. Some of the features of OpenX's new platform include ability to staging real-time auctions for online ad spots and allowing publishers to get the benefits of higher bids until the very last second.

The company’s community of over 38,000 publishers powers well over 150,000 sites. OpenX products are used in over 100 countries. They have been translated into different languages by community contributors.

OpenX’s main rival is Google's DoubleClick ad server. Google took over the company for roughly $3.1 billion two years ago, as part of a multi-billion-dollar wave of ad-server firm acquisitions, which included Microsoft and AOL purchasing aQuantive and Adtech, respectively. OpenX is demonstrating that combining a widely adopted open-source product with a unique business model can provide the basis for a company of significant scale.