[Angel Djambazov]

Anyone know what is up with this whole Network Advertising Initiative conference coming up in December? The conference focuses on "Building Trust in Affiliate Marketing" which has to be some kind of joke/spin if you look at their member list.

From reading the agenda much of it seems to have sprung from the whole FTC penalty against 180 where 180 claimed "bad affiliates" where the problem with their software.

Check out their member list (with text from their site):

NAI Associate Members

The following companies are members in-good-standing with the NAI and provide online marketing technologies or services – but do NOT participate in the opt-out functions described on this Website.

121 Media (www.121media.com)

Adteractive (www.adteractive.com)

AlmondNet (www.almondnet.com)

America Online, Inc. (AOL) (www.aol.com)

BlackFoot, Inc. (www.blackfootinc.com)

Casale Media, Inc. (casalemedia.com)

Claria Corporation (www.claria.com)

Contextweb, Inc. (www.contextweb.com)

Fastclick (www.fastclick.com)

ValueClick, Inc. (www.valueclick.com)

The following companies are members in-good-standing with the NAI and provide online marketing technologies or services. They do not engage in network-based ad targeting, and as such are not required to participate in the NAI Principles.

AWS Convergence Technologies, Inc. (www.aws.com, www.weatherbug.com)

Direct Revenue, LLC (www.direct-revenue.com)

eXact Advertising, LLC (www.exactadvertising.com)

Hotbar, Inc. (www.hotbar.com)

Intermix Media, Inc. (www.intermix.com)

WhenU (www.whenu.com)

180Solutions/Zango, Inc. (www.zango.com)

[Trust]

I'm confused. So there's a group/conference talking about "Building Trust in Affiliate Marketing" whose members include many well known parasites?

[Angel Djambazov]

Yeah, that's what I understand. Here is the link to the conference:
http://www.networkadvertising.org/affiliate-forum/

[UncleScooter]

They are trying hard to legitimize themselves.

[Angel Djambazov]

Well if the FTC is taking part in such a meet then isn't there inherently a legitimacy to it?

[Angel Djambazov]

Originally Posted by Onlineshoes MGR

Well if the FTC is taking part in such a meet then isn't there inherently a legitimacy to it?

Not to people like us but to people looking in from outside the industry.

[Donuts]

"Yet there is also an urgent need to respond to the lack of accountability and abuse that characterizes the industry. A failure to act will surely lead advertisers to reject the risks inherent in affiliate marketing. Furthermore, regulatory and enforcement action can only increase in our current environment. There is a clear and compelling need for strategic dialogue on these issues."

So the bad guys all band together and declare their working on the important problem that other rogues have caused... yep, stategic dialogue alright.

I'd say with the recent reaming the FTC gave 180, the FTC's no longer the dupe it used to be. The bad guys see the law coming and they circle the wagons.

Interesting agenda:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
10:00 a.m. Affiliate Marketing: the Promise and the Peril
J. Trevor Hughes
Executive Director
NAI/ESPC

10:15 a.m. Making Tiered relationships work
Moderator:
D. Reed Freeman Jr.
Partner, Kelley, Drye & Warren LLP

Panelists:
Kenneth Dreifach
Partner, Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal, LLC

Dan Chiss
Director of Affiliate Strategy &
Publisher Development, Performics

11:15 a.m. Cascading Trust: Avoiding the Spam Trap
Moderator:
Mr. Josh Baer, CTO, Datran Media

Panelists:
Erik Castelli
CTO, Lashback

Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions, Return Path

12:15 p.m. Break for lunch

1:00 p.m. A Regulatory Line in the sand?
Eileen Harrington
Bureau of Consumer Protection, FTC

Christine Varney
Partner, Hogan & Hartson, LLP

Justin Brookman
Assistant Attorney General Internet Bureau, State of New York Office of the Attorney General

2:00 p.m. Break

2:15 p.m. Towards a solution: Protecting the brand and the channel
Moderator:
Stuart Ingis
Partner, Venable, LLC

Panelists:
Ari Schwartz
Deputy Director, CDT

Linda Schoemaker
SVP & General Counsel, aQuantive

Kasey Chappelle
Director of Marketplace Privacy, eBay

Shawn Collins
Co-founder, Affiliate Summit

Quinn Jalli, Privacy Officer & VP of ISP Relations, Datran Media
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What a mixed crowd! Ari Schwartz (good guy), aQuantive (abuser), Shawn Collins, FTC, NY AG's Office, Performics...

Odd mix reminds me of afsrc meetings years ago...

[webworker]

Deep pockets flexing their muscles.

The little guys in this industry need some serious lobbying representation, and there needs to be a little grassroots noise made.

[Donuts]

And we need Kellie there to show the honest folks there what is really going on. The spin will be dizzying, I'm sure.

[ecomcity]

Kellie with a magaphone replacing, or sitting next to, Shawn Collins aught to do the trick.

[Kellie aka Ms. B]

I was actually contacted by someone offering to faciliate having me present if I was interested in doing such. I respectfully declined the offer. At least I hope it was taken as respectful as I do think the offer was sincere and I appreciate the gesture.

I've had several things happen over the last year or so that have been lessons learned for me, some of them the hard way. Because of those things, I'm taking a hard look at reassessing how I want to approach my own activities in the future. Part of that is I'm definitely going to be more selective about where I bring my megaphone and voice my views on all this stuff and the conditions under which I do that.

This particular meeting isn't a fit for me personally. My time and energy is probably best served for promoting my own views and goals in other manners. That doesn't mean that there probably aren't legimate reasons for other presenters to be there. That's speaking only for myself.

[ecomcity]

Originally Posted by Kellie aka Ms. B

I was actually contacted by someone offering to faciliate having me present if I was interested in doing such. I respectfully declined the offer. At least I hope it was taken as respectful as I do think the offer was sincere and I appreciate the gesture.

I've had several things happen over the last year or so that have been lessons learned for me, some of them the hard way. Because of those things, I'm taking a hard look at reassessing how I want to approach my own activities in the future. Part of that is I'm definitely going to be more selective about where I bring my megaphone and voice my views on all this stuff and the conditions under which I do that.

This particular meeting isn't a fit for me personally. My time and energy is probably best served for promoting my own views and goals in other manners. That doesn't mean that there probably aren't legimate reasons for other presenters to be there. That's speaking only for myself.

You can bet they'll all bre familiar with your Adwhore gunslinging work all the way back to the network CoC summit.

[Shawn Collins]

They've announced that this event will be postponed to Spring 2007 due to "a combination of apparent scheduling conflicts and other year-end constraints."

[ecomcity]

Originally Posted by Shawn Collins

They've announced that this event will be postponed to Spring 2007 due to "a combination of apparent scheduling conflicts and other year-end constraints."

Reality is the blackhat Adwhore playas would be right in the middle of their commission thievery prime shopping season doing the dirty on consumer's systems. Hard to talk about commission driven greedy abuses when the BHO's and their blackhat infestation partners are blackening the skys like swarming locus. December 11-12th would be a great time to compile FTC, court and AG rule violations of the participants to throw at them in the Spring meeting.