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As founding partner and COO of DMi Partners, James is responsible for leading the firm’s network administration, finance, accounting, and software development. Before teaming up with Patrick and Adam to form DMi in 2003, James was with J.G. Wentworth, an advanced funding company located outside Philadelphia.

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Best Practices Wake Up Call - Let’s Finish What IAB Started

Written on
August 29th 2007
Author
by James Delaney  |
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openbook.jpgWhen the IAB released its lead generation best practices last week, I was initially very excited by the concept. But as I read the actual document it quickly became clear to me that while this is a good start, the industry must attack the issue with more urgency and work together to take these practices to the next level.

The simple fact that the IAB proposed a “best practices” in the first place points to an industry crisis regarding the credibility of the organizations generating those leads. The first two objectives of the document, protecting consumer data & complying with laws and regulations, aim to take this credibility issue head on. But it’s no small problem and it’s not something we as an industry should take lightly. Unfortunately it appears we’re doing just that.

At the very least with a problem of this magnitude I would expect industry pundits to pour through the document and provide some constructive criticism. As it is I’m not even sure anyone’s reading it.  The document has been out for more than a week and none of the commentary on the piece has even mentioned that pages 3 and 4 contain the same copy. This is supposed to be a seminal document that will shape our industry going forward and no one caught the fact that two back-to-back pages are exactly the same?

This is not a shot at the IAB as much as it is a wakeup call to the industry that we need to take this issue more seriously and lend a collective hand to help put some teeth on these best practices. I would like to take the initiative on behalf of our industry and provide the IAB with some constructive criticism.

The industry needs to work together to arrive at standards that people can and will act on. Please provide us with a clear means for giving feedback.  And you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The internet is built on standardization by “committee” and there are countless examples from RFC produced by the IETF to W3C Develops Web Standards and Guidelines to RSS 2.0 at Harvard Law, just to name a few. Then our industry can step up and work with the IAB using these models to takes our best practices to the next level.

And since the means for feedback is not clear to me at this point, here are a few topics that our industry needs to address.

Accountability: concepts are overlooked like, “proof of delivery” and integration of the data with information created after the transfer by the advertiser for the provider.

Reputation: feedback system that will provide the means for advertisers and providers build creditability and ensure leads quality

Committee Stakeholders: One group of important stakeholders, CRM software providers, is missing from this committee entirely. These companies provide advertisers with the tools necessary to manage the leads once they have been acquired and seamless integration with them is necessary to improve operational efficiency through standardization, provides the real incentive for action because it affects the bottom line for the participating companies.

This is our industry and our credibility at stake. Let’s act like it. The IAB has taken the first step, now it’s up to us to work together, push harder and put measures in place to improve the industry reputation and lay the foundation for future growth.



Reader Comments.

I like the timing of your column. We just had a meeting for OLGA (www.olgassociation.org) yesterday and voiced some of the same issues. We are working on our version of best practices that hopefully will be out in September.

You should look into joining the association.

thanks,

dan

Posted by Dan Felter | 5:16 pm on August 29, 2007.

James,

I agree with you. In fact, I wouldn’t go as far as calling what the IAB has come out with as Best Practices. What they have put out are standards for data transfer. Nothing wrong with them, but let’s not call them Best Practices.

What our industry needs is to come out with some Best Practices that address HOW leads are collected, and WHAT advertisers do with the leads once they get them. When you talk about protecting consumer data, isn’t the big issue the reselling of this data over and over again without the consumer’s knowledge? Best practices that deal with these types of issues is what we as an industry lack. Thanks. Jere

Posted by Jere Doyle | 10:33 am on August 30, 2007.

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