When we started Trafficspaces, we knew we had to face two formidable and cash-rich competitors – Google and OpenX.

Most people would have caved in, rather than face the 800 pound gorilla (Google) and the battle-hardened war horse (OpenX). The main challenge then was how we were going to differentiate ourselves from these two massive firms.

As a good friend told me, "A lot of innovation is done by smaller companies – not the large ones. Find out what these two companies aren't doing very well, fix it, and make it your signature".

Well it happens that there was one thing OpenX didn't do very well. It just wasn't user-friendly enough. Rightly or wrongly, OpenX has a reputation of being a highly technical software to manage. There were

• installation issues
• somewhat confusing workflow
• bugs, patches etc (but aren't all software systems plagued by these?)

OpenX is open-source software which means theoretically, you can delve into the code and fix the problems yourself but very few people I know relish the thought of sifting through thousands of lines of PHP code. Most people just want it to work without having to think too hard about how it does it.

The OpenX team have put in a lot work to improve the system quite a bit since the hey days (when it was known as phpAdsNew and then OpenAds) but the unfortunate reputation is still there and as is often said, perception is reality.

Then there's Google. Riding on the back of its phenomenally successful AdSense program, Google bought Doubleclick and soon after launched Ad Manager. Like many people out there, I rushed to try it out. One word – Anticlimax.

Google Ad Manager (now called Doubleclick for Publishers) works okay but there's just something about it that's not as sexy as when you set up an AdSense account and waiting for your first ads to appear. I got no thrill and frankly, was bored after 5 minutes of poking around the workflow. It clearly wasn't "it".

Then the reviews started coming in and the damning indictment from Bernand Lunn's famous article "Manifesto to Avoid a Google Media Monoculture", and followed up upon by Tim Cadogan (OpenX's CEO) comments essentially alleging that through Google Ad Manager, Google will collect enough information about your direct sales activities to pay you less AdSense income.

Hmm… sheath your swords boys.

In summary, we weren't fully satisfied with the systems offered by the two big elephants in the room, and judging from the enquiries that we are currently getting about Trafficspaces, so are a lot of other people.

Armed with enough information, we decided to create a simple yet powerful, and crucially user-friendly system. By user friendly, I mean, even my grandma should get it. But seriously, we wanted to create a system that

• required no installation,
• has a simple workflow,
• can eliminate those annoying "email me if you want to advertise" messages we inevitably put on our Advertise Here page (read: self-service), and
• of which the publisher feels "complete ownership" (read: white label).

I won't say we are completely there yet but we are working very hard to achieve all the above.

What do you think? You can post your comments below. 

Related posts:

1. OpenX vs Google Ad Manager – Which is better?
2. How to Set Your Ad Prices Via a Real-time Auction Like Google and Facebook
3. The login screen now supports Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo and more