With markets now at 1997 levels and economists predicting recovery won't take hold until 2010 or even 2011, there's a very good chance your marketing budget is being put under a performance microscope, if it hasn't already been arbitrarily cut. CEOs and CFOs want to see the nitty-gritty of your investment plans and understand what they're getting from each and every dollar. As a marketer, the opportunity to revitalize your marketing performance and generate relevant insights has never been more real.

Performance marketing is an opportunistic creature. Show it unsold ad inventory and it will devour those ads and return warm leads at better ROI. But give performance marketing artificially high prices and it will turn its back and look elsewhere. As the recession drags on, there's an outstanding opportunity for a range of online and offline media to align with the world of performance.

I read Angie McCloskey's article "Does Transparency In A CPL World Really Solve All Our Problems?" with great interest. After reading the post, I wanted to share my personal experiences to illustrate the value of transparency and openness in enabling advertisers to deploy and scale CPL campaigns effectively.

Transparency seems to be heralded as the next big thing for the CPA/CPL marketplace. But does it really address all of the problems associated with a CPL model: brand control, quality of lead sources, context of offer placement, etc.? I think the issue of transparency brings up a few important questions for both advertisers and publishers alike: 1) Is this scalable? , 2) Is it really possible, given the truth of network models and 3) what specific problem does it really solve for advertisers in this channel?