Revive Adserver

Last updated
Revive Adserver
Revive Adserver Logo.png
Stable release
5.4.1 [1] / May 12, 2022;3 months ago (2022-05-12)
Written in PHP
Type Advertising server
License GNU General Public License and proprietary
Website www.revive-adserver.com

Revive Adserver is an open-source advertising server that is licensed under the GNU General Public License. It features an integrated banner management interface and tracking system for gathering statistics. It used to be known under different names in the past, most recently as OpenX Source. In Sep 2013, OpenX Source was sold to Andrew Hill and rebranded Revive Adserver. [2] The current code base for OpenX Enterprise and Revive Adserver (formerly known as OpenX Source) are completely separate.

The software enables web site administrators to rotate banners from both in-house advertisement campaigns as well as from paid or third-party sources, such as Google's AdSense. Revive Adserver provides standard banner rotation, click tracking, zone-based ad selection, zone-based campaign targeting, direct ad selection, ad targeting (per browser, domain, language, etc.), ad capping and support for Adobe Flash banners.

History

OpenX Source began as phpAdsNew, a fork from a similar project called phpAds, created by Tobias Ratschiller in 1998. When the phpAds project came to a halt in 2000, Wim Godden decided to create phpAdsNew by expanding the project with new features. He hoped the 'New' moniker would be temporary, lasting only until Ratschiller could update the phpAds website. Unfortunately, this only happened years later, after the name phpAdsNew was too well established to be changed.[ citation needed ]

During the time period between 2001 and 2002, Wim Godden led the phpAdsNew project and later received help from developers such as Niels Leenheer and Phil Hord, continually adding new features and improving the existing ones. After the release of version 1.9, a completely revised version 2.0 was created. This task was led by Niels Leenheer. The new version included many new features as well as a revised graphical user interface.

After gaining in popularity and earning support from the open-source community, the project was renamed to OpenAds. Features that were built for phpAdsNew 2.0 were also integrated into the latest OpenAds software, which at this point had reached version 2.3. [3]

When version 2.4.4 was released in 2007, OpenAds was once again rebranded under a new name: OpenX. The final 2.4 version is v2.4.11 and was released in March 2009. [4]

In 2011, the OpenX company disabled direct downloads of the software (a form must be filled out). Wim Godden subsequently made all GPL versions from phpAds 1.2.0 to OpenX 2.8.11 available. [5]

Revive Adserver can be extended with help of plug-ins.

In 2020 and 2021, compromised Revive ad servers were used to deliver malvertising (advertisements which led victims to install malware). Researchers estimated number of victims to be in "the tens if not hundreds of million of devices". [6]

Related Research Articles

Apache HTTP Server Open-source web server software

The Apache HTTP Server is a free and open-source cross-platform web server software, released under the terms of Apache License 2.0. Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation.

SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring of downloads for load balancing, a wiki for documentation, developer and user mailing lists, user-support forums, user-written reviews and ratings, a news bulletin, micro-blog for publishing project updates, and other features.

VideoLAN Non-profit organization developing software

VideoLAN is a non-profit organization which develops software for playing video and other media formats. It originally developed two programs for media streaming, VideoLAN Client (VLC) and VideoLAN Server (VLS), but most of the features of VLS have been incorporated into VLC, with the result renamed VLC media player.

phpMyAdmin Database administration tool

phpMyAdmin is a free and open source administration tool for MySQL and MariaDB. As a portable web application written primarily in PHP, it has become one of the most popular MySQL administration tools, especially for web hosting services.

Comparison of web browsers

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browsers. For further references, a browser support matrix is a table of support of a Webpage by browsers.

Ad serving describes the technology and service that places advertisements on Web sites, mobile Mobile Apps, and Connected TVs. Ad serving technology companies provide software to Web sites and advertisers to serve ads, count them, choose the ads that will make the Web site or advertiser the most money, and monitor the progress of different advertising campaigns. Ad servers are divided into two types—publisher ad servers and advertiser ad servers.

SquirrelMail Software project

SquirrelMail is a project that aims to provide both a web-based email client and a proxy server for the IMAP protocol.

FileZilla Free software, cross-platform file transfer protocol application

FileZilla is a free and open-source, cross-platform FTP application, consisting of FileZilla Client and FileZilla Server. Clients are available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Both server and client support FTP and FTPS, while the client can in addition connect to SFTP servers.

Ad blocking or ad filtering is a software capability for blocking or altering online advertising in a web browser, an application or a network. This may be done using browser extensions or other methods.

BitTorrent is an ad-supported BitTorrent client developed by Bram Cohen and Rainberry, Inc. used for uploading and downloading files via the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent was the first client written for the protocol. It is often nicknamed Mainline by developers denoting its official origins. Since version 6.0 the BitTorrent client has been a rebranded version of μTorrent. As a result, it is no longer open source. It is currently available for Microsoft Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. There are currently two versions of the software, "BitTorrent Classic" which inherits the historical version numbering, and "BitTorrent Web", which uses its own version numbering.

LAMP (software bundle) Acronym for a common web hosting solution

LAMP is an acronym denoting one of the most common software stacks for many of the web's most popular applications. However, LAMP now refers to a generic software stack model and its components are largely interchangeable.

Metasploit Project Computer security testing tool

The Metasploit Project is a computer security project that provides information about security vulnerabilities and aids in penetration testing and IDS signature development. It is owned by Boston, Massachusetts-based security company Rapid7.

Laminas Project is an open source, object-oriented web application framework implemented in PHP 7 and licensed under the New BSD License. The framework is basically a collection of professional PHP-based packages. The framework uses various packages by the use of Composer as part of its package dependency managers; some of them are PHPUnit for testing all packages, Travis CI for continuous Integration Services. Laminas provides to users a support of the model–view–controller (MVC) in combination with Front Controller solution. MVC implementation in Laminas has five main areas. The router and dispatcher functions to decide which controller to run based on data from URL, and controller functions in combination with the model and view to develop and create the final web page.

Silverstripe CMS Content management system

Silverstripe CMS is a free and open source content management system (CMS) and framework for creating and maintaining websites and web applications. It provides an out of the box web-based administration panel that enables users to make modifications to parts of the website, which includes a WYSIWYG website editor. The core of the software is Silverstripe Framework, a PHP Web application framework.

Google Ad Manager is an ad exchange platform introduced by Google on June 27, 2018. It combines the features of two former services from Google's DoubleClick subsidiary, DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX). Google Ad Manager initially used a second-price auction format, before announcing that it would be replaced with a first-price auction format in March 2019. Google Ad Manager is the free version of this online ad management software and it is recommended for small businesses. Google Ad Manager 360 is the paid version. Google Ad Manager does not require a minimum amount of impressions on individual active ads, but it does have a limit of 200 million impressions per month. Google Ad Manager manages inventory for advertisers, publishers and ad servers. Advertisers are able to manage their inventory of ad creative, publishers are able to manage their ad space inventory, and ad servers can use the platform to determine which ad to serve and where to serve it. Additionally, Google Ad Manager can use data collected from ad performance and ad space performance to make suggested optimizations to the user. These optimizations suggest what the user could change to better reach the goals they have set for a particular campaign.

Malvertising Use of online advertisement or advertising to spread malware

Malvertising is the use of online advertising to spread malware. It typically involves injecting malicious or malware-laden advertisements into legitimate online advertising networks and webpages. Online advertisements provide a solid platform for spreading malware because significant effort is put into them in order to attract users and sell or advertise the product. Because advertising content can be inserted into high-profile and reputable websites, malvertising provides malefactors an opportunity to push their attacks to web users who might not otherwise see the ads, due to firewalls, more safety precautions, or the like. Malvertising is "attractive to attackers because they 'can be easily spread across a large number of legitimate websites without directly compromising those websites'."

OpenMediaVault NAS operating system

OpenMediaVault (OMV) is a free Linux distribution designed for network-attached storage (NAS). The project's lead developer is Volker Theile, who instituted it in 2009. OMV is based on the Debian operating system, and is licensed through the GNU General Public License v3.

XigmaNAS Software

XigmaNAS is network-attached storage (NAS) server software with a dedicated management web interface. It is free software under the terms of the Simplified BSD license.

A potentially unwanted program (PUP) or potentially unwanted application (PUA) is software that a user may perceive as unwanted or unnecessary. It is used as a subjective tagging criterion by security and parental control products. Such software may use an implementation that can compromise privacy or weaken the computer's security. Companies often bundle a wanted program download with a wrapper application and may offer to install an unwanted application, and in some cases without providing a clear opt-out method. Antivirus companies define the software bundled as potentially unwanted programs which can include software that displays intrusive advertising (adware), or tracks the user's Internet usage to sell information to advertisers (spyware), injects its own advertising into web pages that a user looks at, or uses premium SMS services to rack up charges for the user. A growing number of open-source software projects have expressed dismay at third-party websites wrapping their downloads with unwanted bundles, without the project's knowledge or consent. Nearly every third-party free download site bundles their downloads with potentially unwanted software. The practice is widely considered unethical because it violates the security interests of users without their informed consent. Some unwanted software bundles install a root certificate on a user's device, which allows hackers to intercept private data such as banking details, without a browser giving security warnings. The United States Department of Homeland Security has advised removing an insecure root certificate, because they make computers vulnerable to serious cyberattacks. Software developers and security experts recommend that people always download the latest version from the official project website, or a trusted package manager or app store.

References

  1. "Download Revive Adserver".
  2. "OpenX Sells Open Source Ad Serving Product". 2013-09-13.
  3. Matt Asay (July 26, 2007). "Advertising the open-source way with Openads". cnet. Openads is one of the most interesting open-source projects/companies on the planet. Period. It's an open-source ad server. Like DoubleClick without the lock-in or fees. In other words, it's open source--100 percent GPLv2. I guess it should be no surprise that the world's most popular ad server, powering Web 2.0 business models, is open source, just as the LAMP stack is the technological basis for Web 2.0 sites/services. I've been following Openads since May, when my friend Bryce Roberts indicated that he was considering investing in the company. (And so he/O'Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures did, along with Index Ventures, Mangrove Capital Partner and First Capital in a $5 million Series A round of funding, as Tim O'Reilly reports.)
  4. "Index of /OpenX-releases/OpenX-2.4". Matteo Beccati. Retrieved 2012-07-21.
  5. "Opensource.be - phpAds / PhpAdsNew / OpenAds / OpenX downloads".
  6. Goodin, Dan (2021-04-19). "Millions of web surfers are being targeted by a single malvertising group". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2021-04-20.