Friday, 12 December 2008

What Has The Internet Advertising Bureau Ever Done For Me?

In discussions on the a4u forum over several years I've consistently only ever been interested in forming a group to represent affiliate interests - not any combination of merchants, networks and affiliates.

I never voted the IAB into existence yet it now controls how I run my business. All my business activities are and always have been within the law to the best of my knowledge yet come the new year my code sites must adhere to the IAB code site guidelines which will be enforced by the majority of the networks who (AIUI) paid for their vote on the IAB.

As it happens the guidelines are a pretty good first effort and I believe my sites are already compliant but that's not the point.

The IAB guidelines were put together with minimal involvement from established code site owners, for various reasons I'm not going into here.

As far as I can tell there is generally very little affiliate and merchant involvement with the IAB so it is effectively a QUANGO where affiliate networks and media agencies can talk shop with each other for their mutual benefit. That's OK so long as the IAB doesn't ever pretend it represents or speaks on behalf of affiliates.

Furthermore (AIUI) the right to vote in the decision making process effectively costs money so it will only ever serve the needs of its paying members and looking at the membership list I can't see any affiliates - please correct me if I'm wrong about this.

There are some people I respect involved with the IAB (Hero, Helen and Keith for starters) and if someone with a wealth of experience of affiliate marketing that affiliates can relate to and trust (i.e. James Little) had been appointed as Chairman I would have been much more likely to engage with the IAB.

The appointment of Ben Woods (never heard of him) who (AIUI) has no experience with affiliate marketing seems to be a compromise candidate - the least worst option - which isn't a good start for anyone involved with, or affected by, IAB decisions.

To answer my own question I'm hopeful the Code Site Guidelines will result in a level playing field for all affiliates and that the guidelines are enforced constructively to give every affiliate the opportunity to comply before sanctions are imposed.
Posted by at 12/12/2008 01:23:00 AM

4 comments:

  1. Joe , totally agree and think u should start a similar group made up of code affiliates, im sure it would be more helpful and useful way to get all the code affiliates to talk through the problems :)
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  2. I want to point out one thing for the AMC: affiliates are welcome to attend and they don't need to be part of the IAB to participate. If you want your voice to be heard and your opinions to help form actions in this industry, you need to participate.
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  3. Thanks Hero. I agree participation is the key but affiliate marketing is an online industry in an online world and it seems a missed opportunity not to make this online.

    Wherever you hold a real-world meeting only a small proportion of affiliates are ever likely to attend.

    Online virtual conferencing or Second-Life style meetings or an active online forum would definitely lead to more involvement and more debate.

    Of course, more debate is bound to lead to more disagreement but it's hard to have more involvement without it.
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  4. I'm not sure there is much disagreement between "code affiliates". Anytime we've got together and talked shop we're in broad agreement.
    All the contentious debate at the moment seems to be between "code affiliates" and "content affiliates" with entrenched postions at the extremes on both sides.
    Since my code sites include content and my content sites include codes it just comes across as sour grapes to me.
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