Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Today, we are addressing a topic of significant importance to marketers, small business owners, and developers worldwide: the landscape of free and open-source software for advertising platforms. In an era where digital advertising is dominated by a handful of powerful, proprietary ecosystems, the emergence of viable, cost-effective, and transparent alternatives is not just a niche interest but a critical development for a healthier digital economy. Our objective today is to provide a clear, accurate, and objective overview of the tools available, categorizing them by function, and outlining their respective advantages and considerations. It is crucial to understand from the outset that "free" in this context primarily refers to "libre" – software that grants users the freedom to run, study, change, and distribute it. This is often, but not always, coupled with a $0 cost for the core software, though operational costs for hosting and data are a separate matter. We will structure our discussion around three core pillars of the advertising workflow: Analytics and Attribution, Ad Server and Campaign Management, and Customer Data Management. **1. Analytics, Attribution, and Performance Measurement** The foundation of any successful advertising strategy is data. Understanding user behavior, conversion paths, and campaign ROI is non-negotiable. While Google Analytics is ubiquitous, several powerful open-source alternatives offer greater data ownership and flexibility. The flagship project in this category is **Plausible Analytics**. Plausible is a lightweight, open-source alternative to Google Analytics that is fully compliant with privacy regulations like GDPR. It provides essential metrics such as page views, referral sources, and top pages, all within a simple, intuitive dashboard. Because it is open-source, you can self-host it on your own server, ensuring that 100% of your site analytics data remains your property. It does not use cookies and does not track users across devices, making it an ethically attractive option. Another significant contender is **Matomo** (formerly Piwik). Matomo is a feature-rich platform that directly competes with enterprise-grade analytics tools. It offers a comprehensive suite of features, including session recording, heatmaps, A/B testing, and robust conversion funnels. Users have the choice between a cloud-hosted version (which has a cost) and a self-hosted open-source version. The self-hosted version gives you complete control over your data and the ability to customize the platform to your specific needs. Its tag manager is also a powerful, open-source alternative to Google Tag Manager. For marketing attribution, **Apache Superset** is not a dedicated marketing tool per se, but an open-source data visualization and exploration platform. It can be connected directly to your data warehouses—where you might store advertising data from APIs like Google Ads or Meta—to build custom, interactive dashboards. This allows for a unified view of performance across all channels, free from the siloed reporting of individual platforms. While it requires more technical setup, it offers unparalleled flexibility for deep-dive analysis. **2. Ad Servers and Campaign Management** The heart of advertising operations is the ad server—the technology that decides which ad to show, to which user, and at what time. The market for open-source ad servers is more specialized but critically important for publishers and larger advertisers seeking independence. The most prominent name here is **Prebid**. Prebid is an open-source header bidding solution. It is not a complete ad server in itself but a set of tools that integrate with existing ad servers like Google Ad Manager. Prebid allows publishers to offer their ad inventory to multiple demand sources simultaneously before making calls to their primary ad server, fostering competition and maximizing revenue. The Prebid ecosystem includes Prebid.js for web, Prebid Mobile for apps, and Prebid Server for server-side bidding. Its open-source nature has made it an industry standard for transparent and efficient header bidding. For a more comprehensive, all-in-one solution, **Revive Adserver** stands as a direct, open-source successor to the once-dominant OpenX ad server. Revive Adserver is a full-featured ad management system that can be used to manage advertising campaigns for websites and mobile apps. It supports all standard ad formats, provides geotargeting, frequency capping, and detailed reporting. For organizations that wish to completely detach from proprietary ad servers like Google Ad Manager, Revive Adserver provides a viable, self-hosted path. It is particularly popular among small to mid-sized publishers and for managing direct-sold campaigns. In the realm of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), while there is no full-scale open-source replica of the Google Ads interface, tools exist to augment and analyze campaign performance. **Google Ads API** and **Microsoft Advertising API** themselves are free to access, enabling developers to build custom scripts, automated bidding strategies, and reporting tools. The community often shares open-source scripts for common tasks like pausing underperforming keywords or generating bulk reports, which can be run for free within the respective platforms. **3. Customer Data Platforms (CDP) and Consent Management** Modern advertising hinges on a privacy-compliant understanding of the customer. Managing user identities and consent is a complex challenge that open-source software is uniquely positioned to address. **Jitsu** is an open-source alternative to commercial CDPs and data pipelines like Segment. It is a platform for collecting, transforming, and delivering event-based customer data to various destinations, such as data warehouses, analytics tools, and advertising platforms. By using Jitsu, a company can build a centralized customer data infrastructure that it fully controls, avoiding vendor lock-in and reducing long-term costs. This allows for the creation of a single customer view that can power highly targeted advertising across channels. Regarding user consent, the **Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Europe's Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF)** has open-source reference code for Consent Management Platforms (CMPs). While not a complete product, this provides the legal and technical foundation upon which many open-source and commercial CMPs are built. Implementing a robust, self-hosted CMP based on these standards ensures compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA, building trust with users and providing a clear legal basis for data-driven advertising. **Key Advantages and Critical Considerations** Having outlined the available tools, it is essential to provide a balanced perspective on the realities of adopting open-source software for advertising. **Advantages:** * **Data Ownership and Sovereignty:** This is the paramount benefit. You are not handing your most valuable asset—customer and performance data—to a third-party vendor whose interests may not align with your own. * **Cost-Effectiveness:** While not "free" in a total cost of ownership sense, the avoidance of high licensing fees for enterprise software can lead to massive savings, especially for high-volume operations. * **Transparency and Trust:** With open-source code, you can audit exactly what the software is doing. There are no hidden trackers or "black box" algorithms. This builds trust with your users and within your own organization. * **Flexibility and Freedom from Vendor Lock-in:** You are not tied to a single vendor's roadmap, pricing changes, or product discontinuations. You can customize the software to fit your unique workflow and integrate it with any system you choose. **Considerations and Challenges:** * **Technical Overhead:** This is the most significant barrier to entry. Self-hosting requires server infrastructure, ongoing maintenance, security patching, and technical expertise. You are trading a licensing fee for internal personnel costs. * **Feature Gaps:** While mature, some open-source tools may lack the cutting-edge AI-powered bidding or predictive analytics features found in well-funded proprietary platforms like Google's or The Trade Desk's systems. * **Support and Accountability:** Support is typically community-driven through forums and documentation, rather than a dedicated 24/7 hotline. The onus for troubleshooting and ensuring system stability falls on your internal team. * **Integration Complexity:** While they offer freedom, you are responsible for building and maintaining the connections between your open-source ad server, your analytics platform, and your data warehouses. **Conclusion and Future Outlook** In conclusion, the ecosystem of free and open-source software for advertising platforms is robust, mature, and represents a credible path toward a more independent and transparent digital marketing practice. From Plausible and Matomo for analytics, to Prebid and Revive Adserver for ad operations, to Jitsu for data management, organizations have a full toolkit at their disposal. The decision to adopt these tools is not a simple binary switch but a strategic choice. It is a choice that favors long-term control, data sovereignty, and cost management over the immediate convenience and advanced, proprietary features of closed ecosystems. For technically adept organizations, privacy-conscious businesses, and publishers seeking to break free from the dominance of walled gardens, these open-source solutions are not just alternatives; they are the foundation for a sustainable and self-determined advertising future. The trajectory is clear: as concerns over privacy, monopolistic practices, and data costs continue to grow, the value proposition of open-source advertising technology will only intensify. Thank you for your time. We will now open the floor for questions.