IAB Affiliate Council Minutes 26th March 2009

[mattb811]

Tweet

HI All,

Many thanks to those who attended last week. Thought once again that it was a positive discussion and hopefully we’ll be able to roll out a few changes quickly.

Research project

• Distinction made between “headline stories”, that we can gather quite quickly, and more complex examples that would better be demonstrated through case studies.
• Headline stories, examples

  i. Do consumers spend more through the affiliate channel?
  
  ii. Do sales convert quicker if an affiliate is involved?
  
  iii. What level of display exposure do merchants receive through affiliates?

• Case studies – covered further in the next section

Actions

• – IAB to look into how we collect data for headline stories

Information on IAB site

• Feeling that information needs to be reviewed and updated
• IAB stated that case studies are requested and more than welcome to be hosted on their site

Actions

• - MB to review current copy and report back on what needs refreshing
  
• - Council members to make suggestions on what case studies we would like to see
  
• - Networks, agencies, merchants and affiliates to provide relevant case studies to the IAB for feature on their site

Affiliate Representation

• Discussion around how affiliates are currently not demonstrating the full range of their promotional activities to merchants
• Currently when approving an affiliate on to their campaign, all a merchant generally sees is a (sometimes inaccurate) list of URL’s and occasionally a short description.
• From a merchants point of view, this limits the transparency that they have on how affiliates are promoting them and potentially leads to situations where affiliates are wrongly rejected from their campaign
• From an affiliates point of view, this means they are not able to fully outline what they do which can lead to them being pigeonholed (as explained here)

Actions

• - IAB to draft some copy to display on the site and to be available to networks which outlines why it is beneficial to affiliates to demonstrate their activity better
  
• - Networks to look at ways that affiliate profiles could be displayed within the interface

Merchant transparency

• Discussion around whether merchants need to provide affiliates with more transparency over certain aspects of their campaign
• These include what activity affiliate sales will be deduplicated against, whether a closed brand bidding group is in operation etc
• General agreement that this is a positive for the industry but uncertainty about whether merchants can be made to give this information

Actions

• - Council members to provide ideas around what they would like to see made available to affiliates
  
• - IAB to then draft copy to be hosted on their site explaining to merchants why this information is useful and best practice would be to provide it

AOB

• It was asked what council members would like to see addressed going forward

Actions

• - Council members to feed back to MB on what they would like to see being put on the agenda

If anyone has any questions, please drop me an email or reply on the forum if it’s a wider query. Be good to see some discussion around what we’re attempting to cover.

Thanks,

Matt

[Frostie]

Great to see the "Affiliate Representation" section :tup

Still confused as to how sometimes I, and others, get rejected despite listing ALL websites either with the network where possible, or a portfolio where not possible. Maybe the merchants need to take a little time to investigate rather than just presuming?

We affiliates can only do so much, as can the networks and merchants. If everyone makes the effort and the onus isn't on one group only, then this problem should be eradicated. Good to see it being discussed!

[befuddle]

Just a thought but surely if I disclose my full range of activities that could be the distraction that gets me kicked off?

I'd have no intention of adding some retailers to my Befuddle site for instance.

[dougs]

As an affiliate we have no issue making available the list of sectors we operate in if it makes it easier for merchants to decide....as we have implemneted on asapventures.co.uk site.

As a merchant, carrentals.co.uk, if we think the affiliate maybe someone we don't want to be associated with they get rejected. In many cases we don't know what an affiliate does and hence sometimes we reject people we should not.

Transparency has to be the name of the game, surely.

Doug

[bapages]

How would those that pomote through third party sites sit with transparency, ie those that use Pagerank10 for example?

[dougs]

I think you just have to talk to the networks when you get an issue.

Doug