OpenX sets its own rate and pays it out two months later

The revenue mechanism

Independent supply-side platforms sit alongside Google's ad-serving stack, connecting a publisher's header-bidding setup to a separate pool of demand for a cut of what that demand pays. OpenX is one such platform, and its own Ad Exchange Terms and Conditions and Ad Exchange Supply Policy, read as the version effective 5 October 2025 and retrieved on 16 September 2026, set the terms a publisher accepts to receive that demand.

What the documents show

On compensation, the terms state OpenX will pay “an amount related to the monies actually retained by OpenX in connection with advertisements displayed on your inventory, as such compensation is determined by OpenX from time to time,” a discretionary formula, not a published percentage. Payment is in US dollars “within sixty (60) days of the end of each calendar month,” and OpenX “may hold any payment until the cumulative amount owed to you totals at least one hundred dollars,” with the right to offset amounts owed elsewhere. The supply policy sets separate conditions: publishers must run substantive, original content rather than “parked or undeveloped domains” or sites “designed primarily to display ads,” traffic must come “primarily from organic sources,” and banned categories include illegal content, extreme violence, hate speech and malware, with categories such as gambling and alcohol needing advance notice to OpenX. On ads.txt and app-ads.txt, the policy states that where a site already publishes one, “the publisher's OpenX account must be listed there as an authorized seller,” and a publisher must own each site or hold “a direct, contractual relationship with the owner.”

The assumptions exposed

The revenue figure a publisher receives is not a stated percentage anywhere in these documents; it is OpenX's own discretionary determination, so any RPM a publisher quotes from experience is an observed outcome, not a guarantee these documents make. The sixty-day window and hundred-dollar hold are contract terms, not the fast-payout framing some ad-tech marketing uses; cash-flow planning around this partner should use the sixty-day figure, not an assumption carried over from a faster-paying network. The ads.txt requirement also shifts responsibility onto the publisher: a missing authorized-seller listing is a compliance failure the policy places on the publisher's side, not one OpenX is shown here to fix on its own.

What to check before you rely on it

This is an editorial checklist. Confirm the current effective version of both documents before integrating, since OpenX dates its own terms and updates them. Build cash-flow expectations around a sixty-day cycle and a hundred-dollar hold, not a norm carried over from another partner. Check that the site's ads.txt or app-ads.txt file correctly lists the OpenX seller account before assuming inventory is fully monetisable.

• Is the ads.txt or app-ads.txt file on the site currently listing the OpenX account as an authorized seller?
• Does the site's cash-flow planning already assume a sixty-day payment cycle rather than a faster one?
• Has OpenX's actual, discretionary take rate for this site been confirmed, rather than assumed from a headline industry figure?

The most consequential gap between assumption and document here is the payment formula: publishers often quote an RPM as if it were guaranteed, when OpenX's own terms describe compensation as a discretionary amount it determines, not a published rate.