A New Industry Association?

Posted by in May 14th, 2008

I had a great call with Rebecca Madigan - formerly with Commission Junction, now with AffiliateClassroom - earlier today. We talked about an industry group dedicated to promoting affiliate marketing.

Over the years there has been a lot of talk and many ill-fated attempts to create such a group - like an IAB for performance marketing.

Generally, people seem to agree this would be a great idea but nothing gets done because everyone is too busy.

The solution seems to be to get funding to support a full time person to act as a sort of industry lobbyist. The best way to get money seems to
be to collect it from many dues-paying members.

In this scenario, dues-paying members would also be voting members who would vote in a voluntary board that oversees the full time person. There could be different levels of membership.

If we could get, say, $500 a month from 20 companies, $100 a month from 100 companies, or $25 a month from 400 companies, we’d have the kind of money we’d need. (With salary, travel, benefits, and overhead the amount of money would need to be significant.)

As long as the group is inclusive and has clearly defined principles, we should be able to avoid industry politics.

This would not be a group dedicated to policing or restricting networks, advertisers or publishers (I think that would be a losing endeavor) but a group dedicated to promoting performance marketing through education and publicity. For example, the representative could publicly address the New York Taxation issue and articles like the smarmy SmartMoney article. The link is to Mike Allen’s nicely-worded response. While he and others capably addressed our community, we need to reach a wider audience.

Such an organization would allow the community to provide input on its concerns and support an individual who could provide eduation, outreach, and publicity on behalf of the community.
There is currently no such organization but there is currently a need for such an organization.