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Press Coverage ExcerptsClick the image or headline to read the full article.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau's most recent effort to forge an industry-led position on consumer privacy and trust is not enough, according to the Online Lead Generation Association (OLGA).
IAB Best Practices Guidelines for Lead Gen Spark Criticism
The Interactive Advertising Bureau Thursday issued best practices guidelines for online lead generation, saying its recommendations will help the industry grow while building trust with consumers. But the guidelines immediately sparked criticism by another trade group, the Online Lead Generation Association, which says the recommendations don't adequately protect consumers from being bombarded with unwanted e-mail ads.
In the midst of scrutiny of the online lead generation advertising sector by the Federal Trade Commission and other authorities, the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Lead Generation Committee plans to unveil best practices guidelines for publishers this week.
Believe it or not, old-fashioned offline dating services still exist. Paul A. Falzone runs a few of them, with names like The Right One and Together Dating. To compete with larger players such as Match.com and eHarmony, Falzone, whose companies are based in Norwell, Massachusetts, turned to outside help--an online marketing firm that specializes in rounding up sales leads. Falzone is not alone. A growing number of businesses are using these so-called lead generation services. Online lead generation companies produced $1.3 billion in revenue in 2006, almost doubling sales from the previous year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Two government regulatory decisions publicized in November set significant new standards for incentivized online lead generation. They are the Florida Attorney General's voluntary compliance agreement with Azoogleads U.S. Inc. and the Federal Trade Commission's settlement with Adteractive Inc.
The Online Lead Generation Association has elected a new Board of Directors for the upcoming two-year term. Dan Felter, who is CEO of Opt-Intelligence and was a founding member of OLGA, remains Chairman of the Board.
The Online Lead Generation Association (OLGA) today announced the election of a new Board of Directors for a two-year term. Dan Felter, who is CEO of Opt-Intelligence Inc. and was a founding member of OLGA, remains Chairman of the Board of OLGA.
In December 2006, Perspectiv CEO Jere Doyle ditched the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Lead Generation Committee and joined the lesser-known Online Lead Generation Association, which plans to vote this week on new board member nominees, including Doyle. He was fed up with the IAB's "lack of movement" on developing standards for the growing industry sector.
IF THE LEAD GENERATION INDUSTRY is like the Mary we read about in that childhood poem, then transparency is its little lamb. Wherever our industry went, transparency was sure to follow. Sure enough, I cannot turn around and look over my shoulder without seeing transparency sneak up upon me. At such times, I find myself wishing that we could solve the transparency problem once and for all so that we could get back to talking about lead generation. When will the day arrive when all advertisers have complete knowledge of where their offers run, and all consumers sign up for incentives in an open manner that builds trust?
Insiders say ValueClick isn't the only firm under scrutiny for its lead generation practices. At a conference in New York yesterday, an Internet industry stock analyst familiar with several firms in the lead gen space said another unnamed firm already has settled with the Federal Trade Commission as a result of an investigation into its lead generation practices. In addition, the analyst indicated other lead generation services as well as advertisers using such services have been subpoenaed, or spoken to lawyers regarding potential legal issues surrounding such marketing practices. Possible regulations requiring an end to practices employing controversial incentive-based marketing efforts, could leave some lead gen firms "profitless," said Jordan Rohan, managing director of US Equity Research at RBC Capital Markets.
NEW YORK, NY, September 12, 2007 - The Online Lead Generation Association (OLGA) on September 24 will host a panel discussion with a representative of the Federal Trade Commission on the topic of questionable lead generation practices. The panel discussion, titled "Online Lead Generation in the Regulatory Spotlight," will take place during the OMMA East Expo at the Hilton New York.
THE FLORIDA ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE has sued World Avenue USA, formerly based in Boca Raton, and its CEO NiuNiu Ji for alleged deceptive Internet advertising practices. Attorney General Bill McCollum called the company's offers of free gifts or prizes "a deliberate attempt to misinform or mislead Floridians." The company is now based in the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the lawsuit.
IT HAS BEEN A LONG time coming, but 2007 is seeing the explosion (in a bad way) of third-party hosted lead generation. I predict, however, that later this year and in 2008 we will see an explosion (in a good way) of this type of lead generation. Hopefully, marketers won't be so snake-bit by a previous bad experience that they avoid jumping back into the market when the best opportunities in hosted lead generation begin to avail themselves shortly down the road. I define "hosted lead generation" as the practice of marketers positioning lead forms on third party Web sites wherein the consumer completes the form, submits it and his or her data is transferred to the marketer. Leads from co-registrations and lead aggregators would fall into this category.
Lead generation firm ValueClick has confirmed that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has notified the company it is being investigated for possible CAN-SPAM act violations concerning its lead generation practices. The company made the announcement through a Form 8-K filing with the Security Exchange Commission and said it would comply with any government investigation of its practices. "We continue to believe that we are compliant with all current state and federal regulations pertaining to our lead generation activities, and we intend to fully cooperate with the FTC in connection with their inquiry," John Ardis, vice president, corporate strategy for ValueClick, told ClickZ in an e-mail.
Online lead generation gets no respect. Online lead generation affiliates less so. While the sector is growing by leaps and bounds - 290 percent over 2005, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau - people like Peter Martin and Robert Jewell just seem to drag its reputation through the mud. These guys had the honor of being sued by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in March for selling the private details of up to 7 million customers to marketers when they said they wouldn't. Spitzer called it the "largest deliberate breach of privacy in Internet history." "There are people that don't do things on the up and up," Dan Felter, chairman of the recently formed Online Lead Generation Association (OLGA), says. "Online lead generation, when done properly, can be done well," says Felter, who is also CEO of Opt-Intelligence, a lead generation firm.
As BtoB marketers shift billions of dollars into Web marketing, online publishers are scrambling to craft new vehicles to make it easier for advertisers to target ever-thinning audiences. Advertisers have started to push for innovation "at the edges, with more granular narrowcasting and [are] trying to identify new audiences," said Mike Azzara, senior VP-Internet business at CMP Media. "We're trying to provide intelligence to match marketers with the right profiles."
The Interactive Advertising Bureau Monday proposed a set of best practice standards for online lead generation. The standards include the requirements that all lead generation efforts be permission-based; advertisers, publishers and vendors should only send information that consumers have requested; advertisers have a clear privacy policy; and that publishers and vendors only deliver data that meet advertisers' criteria for a "quality" lead. The Online Lead Generation Association, a 4-month-old group, responded to the proposal with a statement indicating that it intended to develop more specific standards. "It is one of our goals at OLGA to provide more specific and informative guidelines than those proposed by the IAB," said the group's chairman, Dan Felter, in a statement. Felter added that his organization welcomed the IAB's draft guidelines "as a step forward."
People and Accounts of Note December 5, 2005 The Online Lead Generation Association, New York, has been formed by four executives at companies in the field of online lead generation, which may account for $1 billion in spending by marketers on Internet advertising. The founders are: Daniel Felter, chief executive, Opt-Intelligence; Kitt Collier Odukoya, director for online marketing at EarthLink; Stephan Pretorius, president at Acceleration eMarketing; and Chris Redlitz, president, Feedster.
New York-based OLGA (www.olgassociation.org) touts best practices and standards among Web site publishers, marketers and lead generation providers. Though a growing channel for developing customer lists and sales, lead generation practices vary by service provider and advertiser. "What we decided was that we wanted to create an association that is solely focused on this area," said Dan Felter, CEO of Opt-Intelligence, Inc., New York, and Chairman of OLGA. "We want to be flexible, we want to work quickly and we're looking forward to working with other [trade] organizations. "It's becoming ever more popular for Web site partners to generate ancillary revenue and, at the same time, from an advertiser perspective, it's becoming a very attractive medium to generate a highly targeted base of users who are interested in specific products," Felter said.
A group of online marketing executives are forming a new trade organization, Online Lead Generation Association, Inc. Revenues from referrals and lead generation came to $347 million--or 6 percent of all online ad revenue--in the first half of this year, according to a September report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Many sites ask registrants whether they want to receive e-mail newsletters from third parties, but those sites don't all go about this process in the same way. As a result, some users who sign up might actually be interested in receiving the e-mails, but others will send them straight to the recycle bin. "Advertisers are starting to hear this buzz about online lead generation and co-registration," said Daniel Felter, CEO of Opt-Intelligence Inc. and one of the founders of the new group. "But I don't think they really understand how to go about it, and what processes they should focus on to make sure they get good, quality leads." He added that requiring users to accept at least some e-mail offers as a condition of registration probably does not result in high-quality leads. "That, in our opinion, is not a very friendly user experience." Other founders of the group are Stephan Pretorius, president of Acceleration eMarketing; Chris Redlitz, president of Feedster; and Kitt Collier Odukoya, director of online marketing, EarthLink. |
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