Why I Support The IAB And The Affiliate Marketing Council

Affiliate blogs are great these days, we can fully vent our frustrations about what we see as less than clever actions of networks and merchants. Occasionally we point out less than ethical actions of our fellow affiliates. But sometimes our views, albeit well thought out, often don't change anything.

After meeting a network and having a good two-hour chat about the range of issues including what technological solutions affiliates seek, I realised that this sort of dialogue should be a more frequent occurrence.

At the A4uExpo I was the only affiliate that chose to attend the Affiliate Marketing Council meeting of the IAB. Which was highly disappointing. Affiliates tend to criticise merchants and networks for being flippant about the industry and taking their over-ride for granted. But it appeared, then, that it was us affiliates that were more concerned with "networking" rather than trying to shape the industry and partaking in a real-life forum to vent our concerns.

Perhaps its difficult for affiliates to break out of their unstructured existence to attend meetings? Perhaps many affiliates feel they don't have anything to gain from giving a modicum of time and thought?

The issue for me is that without using the resources of the IAB, we'll never be able to agree, implement and monitor a set of minimum standards from those that we often criticise with apparent ease and passion.

We have seen it so many times in recent weeks that merchants don't act with common decency to their affiliates, let alone within the terms and conditions of their contracts with the networks. Merchants also "come to market" with a less than satisfactory understanding of how the affiliate process works and what are generally considered to be "best practices". The IAB and the council, I believe, would be best suited to communicate these agreed standards as I believe thousands of affiliates in isolation could never achieve what educated affiliates, merchants and networks could achieve collectively.

So what am I asking? Well, that you don't dismiss out-of-hand the IAB and at least entertain the idea that the Affiliate Marketing Council is there to make the industry less stressful and a more profitable industry for us all.

If you're a member of the A4U Forum, feel free to contribute now. You may like to start asking "what does the IAB do?" or "how can I contribute to the Affiliate Marketing Council?"