Wendy Davis writing for the Media Post publications stated that “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.
The IAB’s voluntary guidelines state that Web publishers should ask consumers for permission to share their e-mail addresses with other marketers. But the IAB is not recommending that publishers name the specific marketers it will share information with.
OLGA, however, argues that publishers should tell consumers which other marketers will receive their e-mail addresses and obtain consent for each. Otherwise, the group says, consumers might find themselves “receiving hundreds of emails a day as a result of one offer sign-up.”
“Consumers lose confidence in signing up for an offer because they don’t know for sure where their names are going,” said Jere Doyle, a member of OLGA and president and CEO of online marketing company Prospectiv.
OLGA had unsuccessfully pressed for language stating, “Data should not be shared with or sold to un-named or anonymous third party marketers.”
Gayle Guzzardo, who chaired the IAB Lead Generation Committee, said the IAB rejected the suggestion that publishers should name each marketing partner, because doing so might put publishers at a competitive disadvantage.
“We thought it would be not in the best interest of the publishers to specifically list every partner that they work with on their registration page,” said Guzzardo, senior vice president, product management at Q Interactive.
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Filed under: Business News, Email Marketing Tools, Internet Business, Online Marketing | Tagged: e-mail ads, Federal Trade Commission, IAB, Interactive Advertising Bureau, Lead Generation Committee, Member Source Media, OLGA, Online lead generation
[...] caaron wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptWendy Davis writing for the Media Post publications stated that “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. The IAB’s voluntary guidelines state that Web publishers should ask consumers for permission to share their e-mail addresses with other marketers. But the IAB is not recommending that publishers name the specific marketers it will share information with. OLGA, however, argues that publishers should tell consumers which other marketers will receive their e-mail addresses and obtain consent for each. Otherwise, the group says, consumers might find themselves “receiving hundreds of emails a day as a result of one offer sign-up.” “Consumers lose confidence in signing up for […] [...]