Performance Marketing Alliance (PMA) - Affiliate Marketing Association News

[Linda Buquet]

A new affiliate marketing association is in it's formative phase. I've been in contact with the group that is spearheading this effort and will attempt in this thread to keep everyone informed as things progress.

1st up - You can hear all about the initial launch phase and ideas about what the assoc plans to cover, who's involved so far and more on Linda Woods podcast below.

The special guest on Thursday's Affiliate Marketing Insider radio show will be Rebecca Madigan. Rebecca was formerly director of product management at CJ and was recently hired by Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom to do discovery and research on forming an affiliate marketing association.

Host Linda Woods and Rebecca will be discussing the need for an industry association, what's being done, what it could look like, what timeframe is being discussed, what issues it might cover, who is involved so far and how you can get more involved.

This is a much needed organization which has been discussed numerous times in the past, but never got off the ground. The need for an association has been getting a lot more interest recently among industry leaders, especially in light of the NY tax controversy. Although it would take too long to form an association to impact the June 1 New York tax issue, this situation clearly shows why we should have organized one long ago and it could help with other tax or legislative issues that affect our industry, down the road.

ADDED: If you missed the show here is a link to the podcast so you can listen anytime.
Forming a Performance Marketing Alliance

Affiliate Marketing Insider is broadcast at Noon Pacific (3 PM Eastern) every Thursday on WebmasterRadio.fm. Listen to some of the past shows in the archives here.

[Linda Buquet]

From the June 12th 5 Star blog. (Sorry, forgot to copy to the forum.)

The Performance Marketing Alliance is a new professional affiliate marketing association that is currently in the research and formation stage. This long needed organization will be dedicated to bringing visibility and credibility to the performance marketing industry. The organizers have talked with over 40 industry leaders over the past few weeks to determine if there was an interest in forming a professional association. The responses were unanimously YES!

There has been talk about starting an industry association over the years and numerous false starts have been made. The problem IMHO is that no one was willing or able to put in the money, time and resources to get the organization started. That's changed now that Anik Singal has taken it upon himself to finance the launch. The formation phase is being sponsored by Affiliate Classroom and spearheaded by Rebecca Madigan who was hired by Anik to work full-time on getting all the groundwork done that it takes to start and professional association. Prior to joining Affiliate Classroom, Rebecca was director of product management and solutions marketing manager at CJ. Rebecca just emailed me:

"We have a lot to do yet to get this started. There is a fine balance between gathering enough input and support from the industry, and getting traction by taking action. While we continue to solicit feedback from a broad base of performance marketing professionals, we’re also moving forward with the nomination of a formation advisory board, and a call for volunteers for working groups who will develop organizational and policy recommendations that the advisory board will approve.

To communicate our efforts and track our progress, we’ve started a website at performancemarketingalliance.com. There are links to interest surveys on this site, so please forward this URL on to all your performance marketing friends and colleagues. We will need the support of as much of the affiliate community as we can muster, and we’ll be successful by meeting the needs of the industry and individual members.

Thanks to those who have already contributed their thoughts and ideas, and I hope we can count on your help and support.

There is an interest survey for affiliates, one for merchants and another survey for Agencies, Consultants, Networks, and Solutions Providers. Make your voice heard and let them know what you want out of the Performance Marketing Alliance. This is YOUR association!

Here is information about some of the industry leaders that are driving the launch phase.

[BradWaller]

Brad Waller checking in here just to answer and questions!

[Larwee]

Good to see you here Brad.

For those who don't know Brad, he has been around a long time and is very knowledgeable.

He is a nice guy too.

Brad is involved in helping to get Performance Marketing Alliance off the ground.

[Linda Buquet]

Hey Brad,

Thanks for joining and being available for questions. I was just going to let Rebecca know about this thread too and will also be informing her about any questions/comments that may come up. We are in frequent communication on this.

I was honored to have been nominated to be on the Formation Advisory Board (FAB) of the Performance Marketing Alliance. Unfortunately I had to decline due to personal issues.

[Linda Buquet]

NOTE to ALL: I have had some affiliates express concerns about who's going to be on this board and are they going to have the best interests of affiliates in mind? I am not officially a part of the organization, but I am for it.

So one thing I'd like to stress, for anyone that has initial concerns is that this group is out to make a positive difference in our industry and the backbone of our industry is affiliates.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that this initial board - the Formation Advisory Board - is designed to be a small, short term board who's main job is to do all the grunt work and leg work it takes to get a group like this off the ground. To do all the organizational work that no one has ever gotten done before - hence the reason we've never gotten an organization started yet.

No one has ever put in the money, time and resources it takes to launch an association until now. And an association never got formed because people just talked and argued about it and no one ever stepped up to the plate to actually do the work necessary to organize a formal association. In reality no one had enough time to do it on a volunteer basis either, because everyone was busy with their own affiliate business.

Affiliate Classroom (Anik Singal) is funding the start up phase and has hired a Director-level CJ person, Rebecca Madigan, to work full-time to launch this. Anik has stepped up and made an amazing contribution to our industry. I think we should be happy that someone took the initiative and put their money on the line to make this happen.

So thanks go out to Anik, Rebecca, Brad, Brook and Lisa for donating their time and resources to do the hard and thankless job of organizing the start-up. We appreciate you!

[Linda Buquet]

My rant about some of the important reasons we need PMA.

"I’ve been debating whether to blog the stuff that came up last week at the Internet Retailer Conference IRCE 2008. A record breaking 5,000 people in the eCommerce space attended, including some of the biggest eTailers out there. A large majority of these companies have affiliate programs.

Around 400 merchants attended a session that was essentially
“a 90 minute rant about what scum-bags affiliates are.”
(See more choice quotes from the IRCE below) "

Scum-bag Affiliates and Skunks - Tales from the IRCE 2008

It's long but there are some important points.

[Linda Buquet]

The PMA (Performance Marketing Alliance) has announced the FAB 11. The FAB (Formation Advisory Board) will work closely with the Working Groups in defining the formation of the PMA, the new affiliate marketing association that is in it's formative phase. Together they will define scope/objectives, governance, membership, operations, and fundraising.

Congratulations to the following industry leaders who have been elected, by their peers, to represent the performance marketing industry in the formation of its inaugural professional association. The FAB 11 are:

Affiliate
Michael Coley - Founder - Amazing-Bargains.com
Scott Jangro - President - MechMedia, Inc.
(Congrats guys, you both had my vote and I think you'll represent the best interest of affiliates very well)

Merchant
Robert Drumm - Affiliate Manager - ACLens.com
Brad Waller - VP Business & Affiliate Development – EPage, Inc.

Agency
Peter Figueredo - CEO & Co-Founder – NetExponent
Brook Schaaf - Schaaf Consulting

Network
Chris Henger - Group Product Manager - Google Affiliate Network
Adam Weiss - Director, Network Development - Linkshare

“Other” (consultants, journalists, solutions providers)
Angel Djambazov - Business Development - PopShops, consulting
Lisa Picarelle - Publisher and Editor-in-Chief - Revenue Magazine
Kellie Stevens - CEO - AffiliateFairPlay.com
(Congrats, all 3 of you had my vote)

More information on the Working Groups, FAB, and upcoming meetings will be found at performancemarketingalliance.com.

[Julia]

Just wanted to pop in and add that they've organized a Q & A session on the PMA at the upcoming Affiliate Summit (Monday at 1:30pm)

I'm planning to sit in, while the PMA is obviously still in its infancy and there seem to be some challenges to overcome in its development, it's amazing that the industry has grown so much and is at this stage - can't wait to hear all of the different opinions.

[Linda Buquet]

I haven't had a PMA update for awhile.

The PMA had a 4 hour planning and organization meeting on Saturday pre-Summit. Peter Figueredo from Netexponent has a good overview of the meeting and some tidbits about other pre-Summit events he attended.

Affiliate Summit Day 0 Recap