IAB To Lead Gen Industry: Shape Up By April 1
- by Gavin O'Malley @mp_gavin, October 12, 2007
"We're doing this in the interest of the lead-gen community," said Sheryl Draizen, senior vice president and general manager of the IAB. "This is meant to solidify the medium itself."
In August, the IAB tackled the controversy surrounding lead generation with a list of best practices to help standardize the transfer and receipt of data between advertisers and lead-generation service providers.
Companies who have since endorsed the guidelines include 360i, Return Path, ValueClick, and WebTrends.
Still, the key is for companies to implement the IAB's guidelines rather than just endorse them, said Gayle Guzzardo, senior vice president, product management at Q Interactive and Lead Generation Committee Chair.
"Without the adoption of these practices by all advertisers, they are simply words on paper," Guzzardo said.
First on the IAB's list of priorities was security, imploring that all lead-generation data--the detailed information consumers give marketers online--should be transferred and received in an encrypted format.
Secondly, the IAB is stressing common format and setup, so all data is transferred in a common format through secure Web technologies.
Trading in customer leads has become big business in recent years. Marketers spent $1.3 billion on lead generation in 2006--more than doubling the $753 million spent in 2005, and making up 8% of all online ad dollars spent last year, according to the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Still, marketers have questioned the legitimacy of many of the leads being generated--particularly those attained through incentives like marked-down iPods. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission has expressed its concern over potential privacy violations and false advertising claims.
Of note, one of the companies endorsing the IAB's new initiative is ValueClick Media--which has seen its stock fall nearly 40% since May, in part due to its involvement in incentive-based lead generation. In May, ValueClick acknowledged that the FTC was conducting an inquiry into the company's lead-generation activities. The FTC is also investigating other companies in the space.
In March, the IAB in conjunction with its Lead Generation Committee released the "IAB Marketer & Agency Guide to Lead Quality," which reviewed the definition and aspects of Internet lead quality, as well as lead quality's impact on advertisers' marketing strategies.
The guide also provided a ranking system for marketers to use to assess the overall quality of leads based on specific industry benchmarks.
